Norwegian University of Life Sciences
Faculty of
Department of
Master Thesis 2014
30/60 credits
Indigeneity and extractivism in
Bolivia
Marie Harbo Øygard
Credit page
The Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Noragric, is the
international gateway for the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). Eight
departments, associated research institutions and the Norwegian College of Veterinary
Medicine in Oslo. Established in 1986, Noragric’s contribution to international development
lies in the interface between research, education (Bachelor, Master and PhD programmes) and
assignments.
The Noragric Master thesis are the final theses submitted by students in order to fulfil the
requirements under the Noragric Master programme “International Environmental Studies”,
“International Development Studies” and “International Relations”.
The findings in this thesis do not necessarily reflect the views of Noragric. Extracts from this
publication may only be reproduced after prior consultation with the author and on condition
that the source is indicated. For rights of reproduction or translation contact Noragric.
© Marie Harbo Øygard, June 2014
[email protected]
Noragric
Department of International Environment and Development Studies
P.O. Box 5003
N-1432 Ås
Norway
Tel.: +47 64 96 52 00
Fax: +47 64 96 52 01
Internet: http://www.nmbu.no/noragric
I Declaration
I, Marie Harbo Øygard, declare that this thesis is a result of my research investigations and
findings. Sources of information other than my own have been acknowledged and a reference
list has been appended. This work has not been previously submitted to any other university
for award of any type of academic degree.
Signature……………………………….
Date………………………………….…
II Acknowledgements
First, I want to thank my supervisor, associate professor John-Andrew McNeish. Thank you
for encouraging me to focus upon Bolivia, and for your genuine interest in and support of my
ideas throughout the entire process of writing this thesis. I am deeply grateful for your
knowledge and the experiences that you possess, and for patiently sharing your insights with
me – thank you!
Second, I want to thank Noragric’s study adviser, Ingunn Bohmann. Thanks you for seeing
solutions rather than problems, and for helping out with even the smallest little details
regarding my studies.
Third, I want to thank all the wonderful people I met during my stay in Bolivia. Thank you for
spending time with me and for the information given.
Last but not least, special thanks are given to my family and friends. Names are not needed –
you all know who you are. Thank you for always believing in me and supporting me: I am
forever grateful to have all of you in my life. III IV Abstract
This thesis explores the main challenges associated with the inclusion of indigenous peoples
in processes of natural resource extraction. With a predominant focus on the indigenous
population on the one hand, and state formation and natural resource governance on the other,
I argue that the Bolivian society is structured to include some peoples and exclude others.
My findings suggest that the Morales administration struggles to overcome enduring
structures of inequality that were created by colonialism – even under the current indigenous
discourse in which ‘ethnic politics’ has become “mainstream”. Therefore, unresolved tensions
persist – over what it means to be indigenous as well as over how to effectively include the
indigenous population in processes of natural resource extraction. Whilst the Bolivian state
has expanded the country’s extractive industries on the basis of economic necessity,
indigenous peoples in the country argue that their expansion conflicts with respect for Mother
Earth and the environment. As I discover through my field research, many indigenous
representatives and their supporters consider further capitalization of the economy and ‘ethnic
politics’ as incompatible. The state lacks institutional control in its hydrocarbon sector. This
has stimulated large-scale corruption that strengthens inequality amongst and between
indigenous peoples and the state, and fuels unequal power relations. Indeed, as I argue
drawing upon Karl (2007), the absence of a ‘fiscal social contract’ further weakens the state’s
legitimacy vis-à-vis its indigenous population. Whilst the role of indigenous peoples in
natural resource governance is formally strengthened through further constitutional support
for rights to prior consultation, the legal regulatory framework in which these right are
exercised, give rise to a set of unintended consequences. Poor procedural activity and lack of
due processes hampers indigenous peoples capacity to effectively participate in natural
resource governance. I therefore conclude that, despite formal advances in cultural
recognition and political representation, indigenous peoples’ participatory power and role in
natural resource governance is still severely limited.
Key words: indigenous peoples, indigeneity, “Andean-Amazonian” capitalism, ethnic right,
prior consultations, natural resource governance, extractivism, political participation, Bolivia.
V VI Abbreviations
BS
Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas, Indígenas y Originarias de
Bolivia, “Bartolina Sisa”, National Confederation of Peasants, Indigenous and
Native Women in Bolivia
CIDOB
Confederación Indígena del Oriente de Bolivia, Indigenous Federation of
Eastern Bolivia
CEADL
Centro de Estudios y Apollo al Desarollo Local, Center for Studies and
Support to Local Development
CONAMAQ Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu, National Council for
Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu
CSUTCB
Confederación Sindical Ùnica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, United
Federation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia
FPIC
la consulta previa, libre y informada, free, prior and informed consent
IDH
Impuesto Directo a los Hidrocarburos, Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons
IMF
International Monetary Fund
ILO
International Labor Organization
IOS
indígena originario campesino, indigenous original peasant
ISI
import substitution industrialization
LPP
Law of Popular Participation
MAS
Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement towards Socialism
MNR
Movimiento
Nacionalista
Revolucionaria,
Nationalist
Revolutionary
Movement
MST
Movimiento sin Tierra, Movement of People Without Land
NORAD
Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation
NGO
Non-governmental organization
OfD
Oil for Development
OTB
organizaciónes territoriales de base, territorial grass root organization
TCO
tierras comunitarias de origen, original communal lands
TIPNIS
Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure, Isobore Sécure National
Park and Indigenous Territory
UNDRIP
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
UNITAS
Unión Nacional de Instituciónes para el Trabajo de Acción Social, the National
Union of Institutions for Social Action Work
WB
World Bank
VII YPFB
Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscaleros Bolivianos, Bolivia’s national oil and gas
cooperation
VIII Table of Content
CREDIT PAGE ........................................................................................................................................ I
DECLARATION .....................................................................................................................................II
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................................... III
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................................... V
ABBREVIATIONS ...............................................................................................................................VII
1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 STRUCTURE .................................................................................................................................... 3
2.0 METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK AND CHOICES ......................................................... 5
2.1 A QUALITATIVE APPROACH TO MY INVESTIGATION ...................................................................... 5
2.1.1 Semi-structured interviews..................................................................................................... 5
2.1.2 Informants .............................................................................................................................. 7
2.2 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES WITH MY EMPIRICAL FINDINGS ................................................... 8
2.3 ACCOMMODATION ....................................................................................................................... 11
2.4 TRAVELS ...................................................................................................................................... 12
2.5 SECONDARY SOURCES ................................................................................................................. 13
SECTION I: BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................... 14
1.0 BOLIVIA’S POLITICAL HISTORY AND ITS EMBEDDED CONTRADICTIONS ..................................... 14
1.1 State formation, governance and political participation in Bolivia ....................................... 14
2.0 INDIGENEITY AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN THE BOLIVIAN CONTEXT........................................ 20
2.1 Indigeneity under the colonial era .......................................................................................... 21
2.2 Indigeneity under the liberal era ............................................................................................ 23
2.3 Indigeneity in the plurinational era ........................................................................................ 26
3.0 NATURAL RESOURCE EXTRACTION IN BOLIVIA .......................................................................... 28
3.1 The politics of natural resources ............................................................................................ 28
3.2 Linkages between economic performance and natural resource wealth................................ 33
3.3 Bolivia and its extractive economic industries ....................................................................... 36
SECTION II: EMPIRICAL EXPLORATION AND DISCUSSION.............................................. 40
1.0 EXPLORING THE CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH THE INCLUSION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN
NATURAL RESOURCE GOVERNANCE .................................................................................................. 40
1.1 Neoliberalism with a hint of indigeneity? ............................................................................... 41
1.2 Clientelism and the uneven access to economic and political power ..................................... 46
1.3 Bolivia anno 2014: Who is indigenous? ................................................................................. 49
2.0 CHALLENGES OF NATURAL RESOURCE EXTRACTION IN CONTEMPORARY BOLIVIA ................... 54
2.1 Nationalization of natural resources: solely an illusion?....................................................... 55
IX 2.2 In a state of corruption? ......................................................................................................... 58
2.3 Weak institutional capacity: the root cause to contemporary conflicts?................................ 59
3.0 THE PROLIFERATION OF THE ‘ETHNIC RIGHTS AGENDA’ ............................................................. 62
3.1 The right to prior consultations and free, prior and informed consent .................................. 64
3.2 El anteproyecto de la ley de consulta previa .......................................................................... 72
3.0 CONCLUDING REMARKS ........................................................................................................ 76
4.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................................... 81
5.0 APPENDICES................................................................................................................................ 87
APPENDIX I: INTERVIEW GUIDE ......................................................................................................... 87
X 1.0 Introduction
In this thesis, I explore the main challenges associated with the inclusion of indigenous
peoples in processes of natural resource extraction in Bolivia. With a predominant focus on
the indigenous population on the one hand, and state formation and natural resource
governance on the other, I argue that the Bolivian society is structured to include some people
and exclude others. This, I hold, is rooted in Bolivia’s political history, in which the concept
of indigeneity was first constructed.
Thus, I analyze how the ‘politics of indigeneity’ came about and how the meanings of
indigeneity has been negotiated ever since – by indigenous peoples themselves as well as by
the various governments’ in office. I show how political and economic institutions and
cultural logics reproduce racial discrimination and structural inequality, and how the rights to
prior consultations have largely failed to sufficiently increase indigenous peoples’
participatory power and decision-making role in processes of natural resource extraction. I
conclude that the Morales administration struggles to overcome enduring structures of
inequality – even under the current indigenous discourse in which ‘ethnic politics’ has
become “mainstream”. Therefore, unresolved tensions persist.
In Bolivia, the marginalization of indigenous peoples and the abolishment of their
communities underpin the country’s political history (Gotkowitz 2007: 3). Thus, it should
come as no surprise that social protest and social uprisings by numerous indigenous
movements have gone hand-in-hand with Bolivia’s state-building project, as highlighted by
various authors (Crabtree & Whitehead 2008, Gotkowitz 2007 and Postero 2007).
The “Indian Question” was initially brought into state politics and practices by the
Spanish empire, and during the colonial era, a discriminating pattern of forced servitude and
various taxes were imposed upon the majority of Bolivia’s indigenous population (Gotkowitz
2007: 13, Postero 2007: 9). Later, during the populist cycle following the 1952 Revolution,
the racial and cultural domination directed against the indigenous population was further
strengthened through the state’s ‘corporatist party structure’, which, in general terms,
categorized peoples into various groups based on class and ethnicity (Postero 2007: 38).
Additionally, indigenous peoples’ formal ties to the state have been further weakened due to
privatization of land and labor – the main features characterizing the neoliberal era underway
since the mid-1980s onwards (Yashar 1999: 85).
1 Particularly since the 1990s onwards, social movements have become unified in their
opposition against the neoliberal economic model – as exemplified by the “Water War” in
2000 and the subsequent “Gas War” in 2003 (Flesken 2013: 340-341). A political shift has
thus occurred, in which ‘ethnic politics’ by means of pro-indigenous discourses have been
brought onto the political stage and into national politics. Throughout Latin America as a
whole, various left-of-centre governments have been brought into power, and in Bolivia, the
presidential election of Evo Morales in 2005 reflects this political shift (Bull 2013: 75,
Hindery 2013: 148).
Once formally elected president of what is now the Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia
(the Plurinational State of Bolivia), Morales pronounced that he would govern in favor of
Bolivia’s indigenous population and ensure that indigenous issues were made centre stage in
national politics (Hindery 2013: 148). Thus, he has embarked on a “depoliticizing democratic
revolution” (Hindery 2013: 149) in which the indigenous population’s political participation
and decision-making role is sought strengthened through various constitutional mechanisms
and policies. By and large, protection and respect of Mother Earth and the environment, and
moreover, of greater recognition of indigenous peoples rights to self-determination, territorial
control, autonomy and prior consultations are central elements within the indigenous
discourse advocated by Morales and his administration.
However, by continuing on a path of extractivism under a so-called “AndeanAmazonian” capitalist system – a form of state capitalism in which economic growth and
development is dependent upon the revenues from natural resources – the Morales
administration has yet to fulfill its promises towards indigenous peoples: the majority of
Bolivia’s population (Hindery 2013: 148). Thus, a rather strange paradox is occurring in
contemporary Bolivia: socio-environmental and political conflicts still persist, and Morales
and his administration are thus under great pressure by those that first brought them into
power – namely the indigenous population itself.
My thesis starts from this vantage point. I seek to answer the following problem
statement: What are the main challenges associated with the inclusion of indigenous peoples
in processes of natural resource extraction in Bolivia, and what are the effects of these
challenges?
2 1.1 Structure
This thesis is structured as follows. In Chapter 2, I explain and present the qualitative research
approached used in this thesis. I discuss how I positioned myself as a researcher ‘out in the
field’ and moreover, how my informant’s list evolved. I also highlight strengths and
weaknesses with my empirical findings and discuss how these were addressed in practice.
In Section I, I explore Bolivia’s political history. This section provides a contextual
backdrop that will ease the reader’s understanding of the challenges associated with the
inclusion of indigenous peoples into processes of natural resource extraction in Bolivia. Thus,
in Chapter 1, emphasis is given to state formation and natural resource governance, and to the
ways in which indigenous peoples’ identities are constructed and negotiated within these state
structures.
In Chapter 2, I delve into the complex and multifaceted concept of indigeneity, and
explore how and why the ‘Indian question’ continues to be a source of conflict in
contemporary Bolivia. Chapter 3 deals with the linkages between economic performance and
natural resource wealth. I discuss the well known ‘resource curse’ literature and the paradox
of plenty hypothesis – both of which have been applied almost exclusively to countries of the
Global South. However, I question these theories’ ability to sufficiently explain the
complexities associated with natural resource abundance in Bolivia. Rather than natural
resource-abundance being the root cause of violent conflicts, I argue that indigenous peoples
ongoing struggles for self-determination, territorial control and greater political participation
in natural resource governance are better explained in terms of Bolivia’s political and socioeconomic context and the structural inequalities that the political system generates.
Section II explores the challenges that my informants view as most central concerning
natural resource extraction in Bolivia. In Chapter 1, I discuss the ‘middle-ground’ position
pursued by the Morales administration, in which the state – under a so-called “AndeanAmazonian” capitalist model – keeps expanding its extractive industries whilst
simultaneously advocating a pro-indigenous discourse characterized by greater recognition of
indigenous peoples individual and collective rights. I discuss the challenges and implications
that this ‘middle-ground’ position reveals and argue that contemporary contestations over
‘ethnic politics’ are rooted in indigenous peoples different understandings of the meaning of
indigeneity itself as well as in opposing views regarding natural resource extraction at large.
Chapter 2 investigates the challenges associated with the lack of institutional control in
the hydrocarbon sector. I explore how a missing ‘fiscal social contract’ between the Bolivian
state and its citizenry increases large-scale corruption, and how this weakens the Morales
3 administration’s legitimacy vis-à-vis the indigenous population in processes of natural
resource governance.
In Chapter 3, I go a step further and look into the rights to prior consultations and free,
prior and informed consent (FPIC). Whilst the ‘ethnic rights agenda’ has been advocated by
the indigenous peoples themselves as a mean to strengthen political participation in processes
of natural resource extraction on indigenous territories, the legal framework onto which this
approach is built also comes with a set of unintended consequences. Thus, in Chapter 3, the
effects of prior consultations are explored in greater detail. The chapter concludes that prior
consultations strengthen indigenous peoples’ political participation only when the outcomes
of natural resource extraction on indigenous territories are properly addressed.
Lastly, the final chapter sums up my main findings and provides some conclusions in
response to my initial problem statement.
4 2.0 Methodological framework and choices
2.1 A qualitative approach to my investigation
I conducted a fieldwork in Bolivia from the beginning of October through the end of
November 2013. Apart from short excursions to both Cochabamba and Santa Cruz where I
participated in workshops related to the challenges and consequences of natural resource
extraction on indigenous peoples territories, I spent most of my time in La Paz. Here, I
worked closely with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that work with indigenous
peoples on issues concerning their political, economic and social rights.
Keeping in mind that indigenous peoples have been marginalized and excluded from
the political arena for centuries, there are now a growing number of NGOs working to equip
leaders and activists within indigenous peoples organizations and social movements with the
tools to strengthen their impact vis-à-vis the government and public institutions. Given the
focus of my thesis, I found it to be of upmost importance to cooperate with some of these
NGOs. Indeed, I discovered that they possess invaluable knowledge of the historical
development processes concerning the rights of indigenous peoples, first-hand information
about the country’s political-economic context, of the new constitution of 2009 and of the
political discourse more generally. They also have contact with and work directly with leaders
of several indigenous peoples organizations. Without limiting the importance of secondary
sources of information and literature, I nevertheless want to ensure the reader that the main
findings in this thesis are based primarily upon own experiences and insights drawn from
observations, interviews and conversations with people that I met during my stay in Bolivia.
To increase my understanding of the challenges associated with the inclusion of
indigenous peoples in processes of natural resource extraction, I conducted interviews with
leaders from different indigenous organizations as well as with people who work in or are
closely connected to NGOs that seek to promote and protect the rights of indigenous peoples.
In addition, the numerous conversations and discussions that I had with people – outside of
offices, meeting rooms and scheduled interviews – should not be overlooked, as these
constantly gave me a deeper understanding of the complexities and contradictions embedded
within the Bolivian society and culture.
2.1.1 Semi-structured interviews
Interviews can be conducted in several ways, and as a researcher there are a number of
considerations to be made before choosing one form over another. Following Willis (2006:
5 144-145), it is important to reflect upon not only the topic that is to be researched, but also
your informant and the context in which the interview is taking place.
All of the interviews that I carried out during my stay in Bolivia where conducted in a
semi-structured way – sometimes also referred to as semi-standardized interviews (Berg &
Lune 2012: 112). As the label implies, this type of interview is neither fully structured nor
completely unstructured. Rather, as Berg & Lune (2012: 108, 112) argue, it is a mix of both
worlds, in which the main difference lies with the degree of rigidity that the researcher
imposes to the presentational structure.
Generally speaking, the researcher commonly has a set of predetermined questions and
topics that are sought answered during the interview, but – importantly – the informant is
implicitly expected to elaborate on particular issues of interest, and is also given the freedom
to do so as the interview evolves (Berg & Lune 2012: 112, Willis 2006: 144). As such, certain
assumptions do in fact underlie a semi-standardized interview, and the researcher must be
aware of this for as to enable himself to make certain considerations both ahead of the
interview, but also as the interview evolves. For instance, although I had formulated and
structured my topics and questions ahead of my very first interview, I nevertheless had to
rearrange some of them and word myself in a different manner because, at first, my informant
did not grasp what kind of information I was actually looking for. In this particular case, my
questions were too swift, which resulted in me having to explain a whole lot more than I
originally anticipated and expected.
This experience confirms the importance of flexibility when conducting research by
the use of a semi-standardized structure. To avoid that valuable information gets lost along
the way, the researcher must be prepared and willing to make changes as the interview
develops: the level of language might be adjusted; predetermined topics and questions might
have to be clarified; and themes might need to be both deleted and added according to the
informants’ response (Berg & Lune 2012: 108-112). Such flexibility enables the interview to
flow and develop in certain ways - according to both the researchers’ and the informants’ own
thoughts and opinions concerning the themes in question.
With reference to the interviews I conducted during my stay in Bolivia, I am
convinced that my choice of interview-form served my informants, my research and myself
well. As I have positive experiences with the use of a semi-standardized structure from a
previous fieldwork, I committed myself to this also while in Bolivia. I developed an interview
guide that contained a wide range of questions on particular themes and topics needed to
increase my knowledge of indigenous peoples rights-situation and their relationship to the
6 Bolivian state apparatus. As already mentioned, some of my questions were further developed
as I continued on with my research, but, in overall terms, I believe this strengthened rather
than weakened my findings and my research. The semi-standardized structure enabled my
informants to elaborate on topics of particular importance to them, and additionally served the
purpose of highlighting themes that I might otherwise had overlooked or forgotten to
incorporate.
2.1.2 Informants
During my stay in Bolivia, I conducted a total of 23 interviews with 27 informants. All but
three cases – which were group interviews – were conducted face-to-face with only the
informant present. Most of my informants either work with or are otherwise closely related to
an NGO and/or a social movement. Many of them are also members of an indigenous
community, and thus presented themselves as belonging to one of Bolivia’s many ethnic
groups. Depending upon the informant in question, I conducted the interview at his/her work
place or office; in his/her home; or simply by sitting down with him/her in break-rooms or
cafeterias once participating in workshops.
Following Willis (2006: 148), who highlights the importance of making the interview
situation as comfortable as possible for the informant, I began every interview by presenting
my self and my research before I embarked on the interview guide. I ensured my informant(s)
that any information gathered during the interview was confidential, and that sensitive
information that could possibly harm themselves and/or their work would be left out of the
final thesis. As such, I aimed to win my informants’ trust. Also, to uphold the aim of informed
consent – which, for ethical concerns, ought to be obtained by the researcher ahead of the
research in question (Brydon 2006: 26) – I made sure to clarify whether my informants
wanted their names presented in this thesis, or if they preferred to be kept anonymous.
As I have previously conducted fieldwork in Cuba and chose then – for security
reasons and due to the sensitivity concerning the topics of my research – to leave all names
out of the final paper I initially assumed that most of my informants wanted to keep their
anonymity. However, to my surprise, all but one assured me they had no problems with
having their names on print. Given Bolivia’s history of repression against marginalized
groups, it is reasonable to assume that peoples see it as their duty – as citizens of the Bolivian
state – to speak their minds once given the opportunity to do so. Whether or not this was the
case for my informants, I do not know. Nonetheless, when referring to the thoughts, views
7 and quotes of my informants, I do so by presenting their respective names, title(s) and relation
to NGO(s) and/or social movement(s). To the extent that it sheds light on the discussion in
question and is a feature that my informant explicitly highlighted, I also specify which
indigenous community he/she belongs to.
2.2 Strengths and weaknesses with my empirical findings
Within qualitative research, all empirical findings are to a greater or lesser extent biased by
both the researcher himself and the context in which he operates. Consequently, the empirical
findings that any analysis is built upon will inevitably suffer from certain weaknesses, most
notably with regards to the data’s reliability and validity. Although I have analyzed my
findings both during the fieldwork and after my return to Norway, there is nonetheless some
weaknesses – or rather, challenges – within my empirical findings I wish to highlight before I
move on.
First off, ahead of my departure, I established contact with one NGO in particular,
Unión Nacional de Instituciones para el Trabajo de Acción Social (UNITAS, the National
Union of Institutions for Social Action Work). In overall terms, UNITAS seeks to ensure
greater appreciation and representation of alternative views to socio-economic development
than those currently presented under the Morales administration. Once in La Paz, Bolivia, I
begun to cooperate with UNITAS’ staff and project leaders, and my list of informants evolved
by the use of the well-known “snowball technique” (Willis 2006: 148).
To ensure a diverse universe of informants, Willis (2006: 148) argues for the
importance of starting off with as many contacts as possible, rather than following solely one
person’s or NGO’s network. In my case, most of my interviewees were co-organized through
UNITAS’s network and I had rather limited control in the selection-process of informants.
Although my contact persons within UNITAS did their best to maximize the diversity of my
informants list, there is always a need to be cautious once deriving informants from only one
network: chances are that those recommended by the particular network might share more or
less the same views, opinions and perspectives as those of the network itself, thus limiting the
validity of the collected data (Willis 2006: 147). In my case however, and although my
informants list grew out of UNITAS’s network in particular, I was nonetheless put in contact
with actors from a variety of civil-society organizations, as well as members from different
indigenous communities, thus limiting the degree of informants biased in favor of the views
and opinions of UNITAS. Additionally, I conducted a total of 23 interviews. This enables me
8 to draw certain conclusions and generalizations even though my list of informants initially
developed in close cooperation with project leaders and staff of UNITAS.
However, I was unable to get in contact with state personnel and/or others with ties to
the Morales administration, and thus, do not have first-hand information about their ‘side of
the story’ with regards to natural resource extraction and challenges between indigenous
peoples and the Bolivian state. Due to limited time in the field, I chose to focus my attention
towards NGOs that work directly with indigenous peoples and thus have first-hand
knowledge of contemporary struggles and political debates rather than pursuing interviews
with state personnel. However, this might have weakened my empirical findings, at least to a
certain extent. Rather than representing certain views and opinions reflecting those of the
Bolivian state, my empirical findings might admittedly be biased in favor of civil societyperspectives in general, and indigenous peoples and their respective communities in
particular. Whilst it is certainly an aim of this thesis to discuss some of the challenges that
indigenous peoples themselves find to be of importance, this weakness nonetheless highlights
the need to also rely on secondary sources of information for as to increase the quality of my
conclusions.
Even though the aim of my thesis was never to research NGOs in particular,
following Mercer (2006: 98) – and mentioned in the introduction to this chapter – there are a
number of good reasons as to why cooperation with NGOs benefit researchers within the field
of International Development Studies. They possess local knowledge and are experts on their
fields of interest; might function as entry points to get a hold of informants; and possess
valuable information, documents, and annual reports that the researcher might draw upon in
his research – but to mention a few benefits (Mercer 2006: 99). In my case, I was able to
participate in workshops and conferences hosted by both UNITAS and the Norwegian
Peoples Aid, and thus put in contact with people that I would otherwise never have met.
Additionally, staff and project leaders within UNITAS constantly informed me of blockades,
public debates and conferences related to natural resource extraction, and granted me valuable
documents – most notable a hand-book of the new constitution; articles about ongoing public
issues; and reports of their work – all of which have been of upmost importance to me, both
during my fieldwork and in the continuation of my research.
However, there are also several challenges or problems of cooperating with NGOs.
These are important to highlight as some may have influenced my empirical findings. It is
commonly argued that NGOs might steer a research project in a particular direction, and thus
function more as gatekeepers than as trustworthy collaborators (Mercer 2006: 99). As already
9 mentioned, I do not think UNITAS intentionally sought to guide my research in any particular
direction per se, but once ‘out in the field’ it was nonetheless important to reflect upon my
role as a researcher to avoid any biases with regards to my data collection. For instance,
during my fieldwork, I participated in a workshop hosted by Programa NINA– one of several
developmental departments within UNITAS – and was given the opportunity to interview
some of the participants gathered at the workshop. As a participant at the workshop, I tried to
specify my role as an independent researcher. Whether I successfully managed to properly
explain this to my informants, I cannot guarantee, and thus, I found it rather challenging – at
least in this particular case – to position myself such as to ensure unbiased findings. In overall
terms, however, I believe I managed to maintain an independent identity as a researcher
(Mercer 2006: 101). Also, and as already touched upon in this chapter, within qualitative
research – and particularly once ‘out in the field’ – it is simply impossible to keep a fully
impartial position: one enters the field with previous experiences and knowledge of certain
kinds, which inevitably ‘colors’ any interpretations of that which is being researched.
In relations to this, as a researcher, it is important to be aware of the issue of power
relations and control of knowledge vis-à-vis local people in general, and your informants in
particular (Binns 2006: 19, Brydon 2006: 27). In the Global South, Western knowledge has
the potential of being viewed by locals as imperialistic in character, and as a researcher, it is
important to reflect upon his/her role as the ‘outsider’ (Binns 2006: 19). Bolivia’s history of
colonialism, indigenous peoples continuous struggles for rights and recognition, and the
presence of multinational oil and gas companies raise ethical questions and concerns, rooted
in power relations, highly relevant. As I was only in the field for two months, I was unable to
fully get to grips with local nuances of power, but I nonetheless tried to reflect upon my role
as a researcher coming ‘from the West’. Particularly, I sensed that some of my informants
simply responded according to what they assumed I wanted to hear. Whether this was due to
my status as a researcher or the fact that I might have been associated with the views of
UNITAS, I cannot tell.
Lastly, with reference to the concept of indigeneity, a researcher must be aware that
peoples stress different ‘identities’ depending upon circumstance: in certain situations, my
informants identified as belonging to an indigenous group or community, whilst at other
times, they simply identify themselves as Bolivians. In addition: some of my informants
talked of themselves in the third person, or as plural even though I interviewed only one
person. By the use of “we” or “us”, he/she elaborated on issues as though he/she talked on
behalf of his/hers entire community. In my experience however, the fact that people
10 strategically use different identities forces the researcher to constantly reflect upon when one
identity is chosen over the other, what causes such a choice to occur, and what the effects of a
choice of identity might imply for the research. Thus, in my opinion, this issue is neither a
particular weakness nor a strength but simply a fact that needs to be considered when doing
fieldwork in an ethnically diverse country.
My Spanish is fairly good, and this was a huge advantage to me during my entire stay
in Bolivia. It enabled me to get in contact with a variety of peoples when travelling by public
transport or participating in social happenings, and it enabled me to participate in
conversations that I would otherwise have had to observe ‘from the outside’. Inevitably, this
increased my knowledge and understanding of the Bolivian society at large. It also permitted
me to conduct interviews without having to use a translator. Whilst I believe this made my
informants relax during the interview, I nonetheless expect some information to have gone
missing, due to my lack of understanding of certain words and phrases. However, I taped all
of my interviews and had them translated into Spanish by a Bolivian girl who works for La
Misión Alianza (the Mission Alliance) – a Norwegian NGO stationed in La Paz, Bolivia. This
enabled me to more deeply analyze my interviews, draw conclusions and connections, and
translate quotes and phrases used in this thesis into English.
2.3 Accommodation
During my fieldtrip, I stayed at the Mission Alliance’s (La Misión Alianza) guesthouse, which
is located in Obrajes in the Southern District of La Paz. In general, La Misión Alianza works
to strengthen local communities and organizations throughout all of Bolivia, particularly in La
Paz and El Alto – the capital’s satellite city – and further, the NGO’s development projects
are focused around issues such as water, sanitation, health and education1. During my stay, I
was invited to visit projects and main offices in La Paz and El Alto, and although I did not
primarily cooperate with La Misión Alianza for my research project, their local and regional
knowledge of Bolivia was nonetheless of great advantage to me.
Also, locals primarily staff the guesthouse, and they constantly informed me about
public transport, customs, cultural practices and local events, and upon occasion, helped me to
order flight tickets. As mentioned above, they also helped me find a suitable translator. Taken
together, this eased my understanding of Bolivia, and of the city of La Paz in particular, and
enabled me to get around way faster than was I to figure out everything on my own.
1 Misjonsalliansen: http://www.misjonsalliansen.no/her-jobber-vi/bolivia - 19.05.14.
11 Moreover, because those working at the guesthouse were genuinely interested in my project, I
constantly found myself in deep conversations about Bolivia’s political and socio-economic
development processes. Also, I was invited to their homes – most of who define themselves
as indigenous and live in El Alto. In total, these informal visits and conversations inevitably
gave me a deeper understanding of the Bolivian society.
2.4 Travels
During my fieldtrip, I attended two different workshops and thus got to travel to cities other
than La Paz. Both were organized by NGOs that seek to equip leaders, members and activists
of indigenous organizations and social movements with necessary tools to strengthen their
impact vis-à-vis the Bolivian government and public institutions. Whereas the former was
hosted by UNITAS and took place in Cochabamba, the capital of Cochabamba Department,
the latter was organized by Norwegian People’s Aid and took place in Santa Cruz. In both
cases, the hosting committee of the respective organizations accommodated me, and I was
given a private room on campus. Additionally, the project leaders within each organization
introduced me to various people of possible interest to my research project. This ensured a
rapidly growing informant’s list, which was important to me due to limited time in the field
altogether. Albeit the challenges of limited control in the selection process of informants –
referred to in a previous section of this chapter – attendance at these workshops were
nonetheless of upmost importance to my research project.
However, although I was invited to not only attend but also participate in workshop
sessions and activities, in practice, time did not allow for me to fully take part. During
daytime, my informants attended activities at different hours, and thus, my project leaders
‘handed me’ informants whenever the latter had time off in their schedules. Thus, I had to
work ad hoc constantly, which had the boomerang effect of me having to observe rather than
to fully participate in workshop sessions and discussions once a spot opened up in my own
schedule. Consequently, I might have lost out on some interesting views and opinions derived
at in plenum, which might have weakened my empirical findings. Thus, if I am to conduct
similar fieldworks in the future, in which attendance at workshops suits the research project, I
will seek to schedule interviews ahead of arrival rather than once at the workshop.
12 2.5 Secondary sources
In January 2013 – months before conducting my fieldwork in Bolivia – I attended a press
release hosted by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) in Oslo. The
agency had just finalized an evaluation of one of its main programs – Oil for Development
(OfD) – and as Bolivia is amongst the countries supported by Norad, I attended the press
release to gain insights into the work of OfD in general, and of Bolivia more specifically. The
evaluation report is titled Facing the Resource Curse: Norway’s Oil for Development
Program (6/2012) and entails a country case study of Bolivia, amongst others, in which its
hydrocarbon sector is particularly under the loop. Whilst I do not refer to the evaluation report
in this thesis, I nonetheless used it to gain background knowledge of Bolivia’s extractive
industries at large. However, I do refer to another report, which was commissioned by OfD’s
Secretariat in 2012. The final report is written by Henstridge et al. and is titled Enhancing the
integrity of the Oil for Development Programme: Assessing vulnerabilities to corruption and
identifying prevention measures – case studies of Bolivia, Mozambique and Uganda (7/2012).
Moreover, while conducting my fieldwork in Bolivia, project leaders and staff
personnel in several of the NGO’s that I met with gave me reports, manuscripts, news articles
and area-specific details and statistics of possible interest to my research topic. For the
purpose of this thesis, I use a Spanish compendium whereby a selection of Articles from the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are gathered, along with
Bolivia’s new constitution. The compendium is titled Compendio: Constitución Política del
Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia (Compendium: the Political Constitution of the Plurinational
State of Bolivia) and was commissioned by the Programa NINA (UNITAS) in 2012.
Occasionally, I also refer to statistics derived at from the World Bank’s official
website. Whilst it is always important to keep in mind that statistics are powerful and
sometimes unreliable or even biased (Mikkelsen 2005: 88), I nonetheless prefer to use the
World Bank’s webpage simply because its statistics are frequently updated. In my opinion,
this ensures – at least to a great extent – its validity and reliability. Moreover, numerous books
and scholarly articles of the issues in question back the World Bank’s statistics and my
empirical findings. Thus, I hold that this thesis is indeed a true reflection of the Bolivian
society and its embedded challenges.
13 Section I: Background
1.0 Bolivia’s political history and its embedded contradictions
To fully comprehend a society’s distinctiveness is not an easy task to accomplish. Yet, the
present situation of any country cannot be understood without knowledge of the past. The aim
of this background section is thus to create a sound understanding of Bolivia’s political
history, and I do this by linking the concept of indigeneity to that of natural resource
governance. I hold that attention should be given to certain historical and political events and
development processes, as these are fundamentally important to understand the current
complexities and contradictions of present-day Bolivia.
Throughout the Bolivian history, the degree to which the indigenous peoples have
been granted space to participate in political life and enjoy various rights as citizens of the
state has primarily been determined by dominant understandings of the concept of
indigeneity. As such, the process of state formation and indigenous peoples’ struggle for
inclusion in this process must be viewed in light of each other, and not as distinct processes.
What is more, indigeneity entails a dynamic dualism with respect to indigenous
peoples identities and their ways of defining themselves as part of a larger community on the
one hand, and as individual citizens on the other. This dualism however – as both individual
and collective actors – does not translate itself into notions of citizenship and political
participation as easily as originally anticipated by politicians and academics. Thus, I hold that
citizenship for indigenous peoples in Bolivia is impossible to comprehend without knowledge
of this dualism.
In the first part, I outline the Bolivian history and explore how the indigenous
population has been strategically discriminated against through various state policies and
practices until present. In the second part, I delve into the concept of indigeneity and explore
how its various meanings have been negotiated until present. The final part investigates the
linkages between economic performance and natural resource wealth.
1.1 State formation, governance and political participation in Bolivia
In modern Bolivia, few political events have been given as much international media attention
as the Isoboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (Territorio Indígena y Parque
Nacional Isoboro Sécure, TIPNIS) crisis of 2011-2012 (Hindery 2013: 1-3). For more than
forty days, 2000 indigenous peoples marched from the city of Trinidad to the capital of La
14 Paz – a distance of 600 kilometers – protesting against the governments’ road project that
were going to be built through the above legally protected national park and indigenous
territory (McNeish 2013: 224-225). While unique in character, the TIPNIS case nevertheless
demonstrates one of Bolivia’s most prominent peculiarities, namely the continuous force and
endurance of the indigenous social movements. Following Gotkowitz (2007: 3), this
perseverance is rooted in the country’s history, which draws the grim picture of centuries
upon centuries of political and socioeconomic marginalization directed against the indigenous
population and the abolishment of their communities.
In April 1825, Simón Bolívar proudly announced Bolivia an independent state, entered
presidency shortly after, and embarked on the project of re-establishing a nation rooted in
liberal ideas of economic equality and political freedom for every Bolivian. Contrary to the
discriminatory patterns of the colonial past, in which cultural and racial domination against
“Indians” had been a defining feature, Bolívar abolished all tax systems that had previously
been imposed upon the indigenous population, and proclaimed them the rightful owners of the
land in their possession (Gotkowitz 2007: 13, 17). If the newly elected president and his
associates envisioned a society based upon just and dignity for every citizen, the proceeding
history nevertheless tells a different story. By re-introducing the tribute tax and depriving
Indians of the right of citizenship, President José Antonio de Sucre – Bolívar’s successor –
reinstated the discriminatory patterns against the indigenous population as soon as he came
into power. This backlash – coupled with a state that gradually became more and more
liberalized due to free-trade reforms and increased privatization of land and labor – generated
tensions that grew throughout the nineteenth century, and ultimately resulted in the Bolivian
civil war of 1899 (Gotkowitz 2007: 17-19).
For the indigenous population, rural mobilization for land, property rights and justice
were underlying factors of the civil war and not surprisingly, these factors also determined the
course of political action of the next historical event in Bolivia, namely the Chaco War of
1932-35.
Rooted in a dispute over oil lands between Bolivia and Paraguay this war is by far the
longest international war, but also one of the bloodiest ones ever fought in 20th century Latin
America. Approximately 25 percent of Bolivia’s population was killed or severely wounded –
and the greatest number amongst Aymara and Quechua Indians and peasants as they were
forced by military officials to fill the army’s front line during armed engagements. In
addition, the war was primarily fought on indigenous peoples land, turning Indians into
victims of repeated violence in their own communities. For instance, in order for soldiers to
15 survive in the field, rural producers were continuously forced to supply the army with
agricultural products – a scheme that further impoverished Indian communities.
Consequently, whilst the war deepened the oppression and discrimination against the
indigenous population, the aftermath nonetheless paved the way for rural leaders that
vigorously began to lobby for labor rights and land. Community-based leaders from all
throughout Bolivia now started to organize as a mean to reclaim their rights to collective
representation, self-government and communal landholding (Gotkowitz 2007: 101-107).
The emerging populist project also reached the national level, in which “the poverty
and misery of the indigenous race” (Gotkowitz 2007: 101) was recognized as an urgent matter
in the process of state formation. For the first time since 1880, delegates from within the
government rewrote the constitution to make social protection one of its primary concerns.
And although the constitution did not re-conceptualize the place for Indians as citizens of the
nation, it nevertheless legally granted the indigenous population more political space than had
previously been the case (Gotkowitz 2007: 101-103).
Above all, the 1940s is characterized by the demands for equal protection and
guarantees as citizens of the state, but also – and importantly – by claims for individual and
collective rights as indígenas (Indians). In 1947, a tremendous pressure by rural leaders
against the local authorities’ failure to respect – and comply with – the laws of the state
reached its heights, ultimately resulting in Bolivia’s largest uprising – the 1947 rebellion
(Gotkowitz 2007: 2-5).
This rebellion, coupled with the indigenous peoples’ rural mobilizing and social
movements launched in the aftermath of the Chaco War helped to set the stage for Bolivia’s
1952 Revolution. Gotkowitz (2007: 3) captures the essence of Bolivian political history when
she labels this period “the hidden revolution before the revolution”.
According to Medeiros (2001: 403), the 1952 Revolution marked a turning point in
Bolivia’s political history, as it became “the end of the liberal cycle and the beginning of the
populist cycle”. Since the 1940s, new parties and organizations had started to emerge. They
sought to increase their political and economic position by challenging the liberal oligarchic
system for the first time since its establishment. Above all, they demanded a modern and
democratic nation free of the racial, discriminatory and exclusive patterns of the colonial past.
This was primarily driven forth by Victor Paz Estenssoro and his Movimiento Nacionalista
Revolucionaria (MNR, Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) (Medeiros 2001: 403; Postero
2007: 37; Hindery 2013: 23).
16 With a desire to reorganize the old political system, the MNR gathered people from
different segments of the population – laborers, miners, the urban middle class and Indian
peasants – and, following Postero (2007: 37-38), promised to promote three things in
particular: 1) to nationalize the mines, and thus the process of capitalist accumulation, 2) to
abolish the servile relationships in agriculture by implementing agrarian reforms and by
creating a domestic market, and 3) to wipe out racial discrimination through the realization of
universal suffrage. As Medeiros (2001: 404) holds, “…this state model represented the only
legitimate form of exercise of power because it was seen as the necessary condition for the
nation’s development”.
Consequently, as the MNR gained ground – and especially after the revolution – no
one questioned its ‘corporatist party structure’ (Postero 2007: 38), primarily characterized by
“…a strongly centralized state administration, state ownership of natural resources, and a state
led program of economic development” (Medeiros 2001: 404). For the indigenous population
in particular, the revolution meant integration into the state as producers, by which the official
codification became that of campesinos (peasants). Additionally, as part of MNR’s unifying
nationalist program, indigenous organizations were renamed sindicatos (peasant unions) and
the peasant ministry was founded (Postero 2007: 38). Arguably, by the power of a strong and
centralized state, the path towards a modern, culturally and integrated i.e. homogeneous
nation started to take foot in Bolivia, thus marking the end of the liberal cycle.
Rather than leveling out ethnical divisions amongst the population, peasant unions
were increasingly brought under the control of the state in the years following the 1952
Revolution. This state-led agenda certainly did not empower indigenous peoples. Following
General René Barrientos coup d’état in 1964, and later, General Hugo Banzer Suárez military
dictatorship, labor federations and unions were made illegal, and the repressive violence
against indigenous peoples were once again reinstated at the national level. However, while
the ‘new state’ and the military regimes that followed preserved the old colonial structure, the
population had increasingly started to view themselves not just as Bolivians in the formal
sense of the word, but as citizens of the nation-state (Albó 2008: 21). Accordingly, during the
years of military dictatorship, the indigenous population in general and the peasant unions in
particular, continued to push for their constituencies’ rights by actively proclaiming that
Indians be taken seriously as political actors (Postero 2007: 41).
Whereas the 1960s and 70s are characterized by a transition towards dictatorship and
military regimes, the pendulum nevertheless swung back again in the 1980s, thus marking a
return to democratic rule and an end to Bolivia’s populist cycle. The economic crisis of the
17 70s had resulted in increased poverty rates throughout most of Latin America, and people had
been laid off and forced to sell their land – at that time, their primary source of income
(Postero 2007: 48). Hence, in 1985, the newly elected government was forced to introduce
what Andersson & Haarstad (2009) label ‘the first generation of neoliberal reforms’: a set of
structural adjustment programs which sought to achieve macroeconomic stability through
measures of privatization of state enterprises, and by opening the domestic market for import
and international capital (Medeiros 2001: 408). While the “New Economic Policy” curbed
Bolivia’s inflation rate – viewed as a huge success by its initiators, the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) in particular – it nevertheless destroyed the country’s
economy: unable to compete with the lower prices of import, national industries were forced
to close, leaving tens of thousands of workers unemployed (Medeiros 2001: 408).
Consequently, in 1986, the ‘March for Life and Peace’ was organized by the unemployed –
mostly miners – whom marched for several days towards the capital city of La Paz protesting
against the usurpation of their livelihood (Medeiros 2001: 408). Undeniable, Bolivia’s
neoliberal era (1985-2005) had officially begun.
According to Andersson & Haarstad (2009: 12), ‘the second generation of neoliberal
reforms’ was implemented in the early 1990s onwards. While the first generation of reforms
had achieved a growth rate of approximately four percent – barely an accomplishment in the
eyes of the World Bank and the IMF – the reforms of the 90s thus sought to increase
economic growth and development by measures of ‘inclusion’ and a strengthening of the
country’s social infrastructure. According to policy documents from this period, “sustained”
economic growth would be successfully accomplished by including the rural population – e.g.
the indigenous population – into the national economy. Thus, the alleviation of rural poverty
and the strengthening of human capital from below became the locus of the day (Andersson &
Haarstad 2009: 12).
Accordingly, under the leadership of Sánchez de Lozada, Plan de Todos (the Plan for
Everyone) was designed and legalized. Seeking to reduce the gap between the state and its
population, a number of reforms were implemented and legislations were made concerning
education, privatization, decentralization, local democracy and pensions. Arguably, one of the
most important changes came in 1994, with the Law of Popular Participation (LPP) –
Bolivia’s version of decentralization. Pressured by international financial institutions – which
sought a restructuring of the state through processes of decentralization in several Latin
American countries at that time – the law aimed to wipe out the continuous imbalances
between rural and urban areas, primarily by a transferring of responsibilities for health and
18 educational services to the municipal level (Andersson & Haarstad 2009: 13-14). Ever since
the colonial era, political power had been centered in the towns, consequently making
political participation inaccessible to indigenous peoples. The LPP sought to correct this
imbalance through a restructuring of the state, primarily by dividing the country into 311
municipalities (Postero 2007: 128). The government officially recognized indigenous
organizations as organizaciónes territoriales de base (OTBs, territorial grassroots
organizations) and representatives within the OTBs were authorized to participate in local
planning of their respective communities (Postero 2007: 129, Andersson & Haarstad 2009:
14). Arguably, the LPP was part of a larger project that sought to bridge the state, the
economy and society together through processes of decentralization and local democracy.
From the outset, it benefitted the state in two ways: first, class articulations of politics were
weakened, as the indigenous peoples were included into the process of state formation.
Secondly, as the demands from the indigenous population were taken seriously by the state,
political stability augmented (Andersson & Haarstad 2009: 13).
However, while democratic in the formal sense of the word, the neoliberal reforms –
and the LPP in particular – produced a range of unintended consequences, and thus came with
enormous social costs. Wrapped within a discourse of “good governance”, in which
municipalities were sought as means to guarantee the well being of its citizens, e.g. the
indigenous population, the structure was primarily characterized by personal clientelist
relations between the mayor and communities, and thus only benefitting a handful of citizens
(Postero 2007: 162). Rather than leveling out class distinctions and increase political
participation amongst the indigenous population, the reform turned out to be deeply
exclusionary, thus “[…] paralyzing the viable functioning of democratic institutions” (Postero
2007: 162).
When viewed in light of the negative outcomes of the neoliberal era (1985-2005), it is
hardly strange that expectations where sky high once Juan Evo Morales – widely known as
“Evo” – was elected president of the Plurinational state of Bolivia in December, 2005. As the
first “indigenous” elected President, his elections attracted enormous interest. His leftist party
– Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, Movement Towards Socialism) – was also amongst many
in Latin America whom had started to challenge the assumptions of neoliberal economic and
political reforms (Crabtree 2008: 1, Hindery 2013: 148). Morales represented a break with the
past, in a country where “[…] a ‘white minority’ had previously monopolized political
leadership” (Crabtree 2008: 2). Not surprisingly, Morales made it clear that he would govern
in favor of Bolivia’s indigenous population, which had previously been denied both
19 citizenship and access to political and economic power. Consequently, since the very day
Morales was elected president, indigenous issues were made center stage in national politics –
arguably, a scheme that characterize his leadership until present.
However, whilst defining his political project “a decolonizing democratic revolution”
(Hindery 2013: 149), Morales has not managed to bring an end to political conflicts. By
continuing on a path of extractivism under a so-called “Andean-Amazonian capitalist” system
– a form of state capitalism in which economic growth and development is dependent upon
the revenues from natural resources – Morales has yet to fulfill the promises of respect for
Mother Earth and Vivir Bien (“living well”) enshrined within the new Constitution (Hindery
2013: 3-4). Thus, the indigenous populations’ struggles for political participation concerning
extraction of natural resources on their land, and issues related to territorial rights, autonomy
and self-governance are still viable in post-neoliberal Bolivia. Thus, unresolved tensions is a
persistent feature in Bolivia, between the state and those affected by the state’s extractive
policies. This thesis sheds light on the contradictions that arises within a country blessed with
ethnic diversity and abundant quantities of natural resources on the one hand, while
simultaneously struggling to overcome the devastating outcomes of a liberal capital-driven
extractivist model on the other.
2.0 Indigeneity and indigenous peoples in the Bolivian context
Today, Latin America is comprised of approximately 500 million people in total. Whereas
Afro descendants account for more than 120 million, indigenous peoples number 40 million
alone (Telles & Bailey 2013: 1559). As these numbers exemplifies, the region is highly
diverse in terms of ethnicity – a case in point recognized once speaking of ‘indigenous
peoples’ in plural, rather than simply of ‘indigenous people’ (Flesken 2013: 338; McNeish &
Eversole 2005: 6).
Whilst a formal definition of indigenous peoples is both problematic and highly
contested amongst academics, they nonetheless agree that indigenous peoples share a set of
common characteristics (McNeish & Eversole 2005: 6) and thus, comprise one of several
ethnic categories. According to Flesken (2013: 335), an ethnic category might be defined as:
“ […] a collective whose members share the perception of a common origin, based on
common attributes such as language, culture, history, territory, and/or physical appearance,
and who may feel a sense of community and solidarity, sometimes expressed through
collective action”. This is the definition adopted in this thesis.
20 To many, an ethnic category is a constructed entity and a direct result of colonialism –
to which Latin America is a poignant example (Flesken 2013: 335, 338). Although the
Spanish empire is history, the discriminatory patterns against indigenous peoples have
nonetheless been reconstructed and reproduced through various policies and practices
throughout the entire region – arguably, until present. As such, it might be argued, as Walter
D. Mignolo (2009: 86) does, that ‘the logic of coloniality’ remains in place. Further, as a
region, Latin America suffers from income inequality beyond imagination, and according to
Telles & Bailey (2013: 1560) indigenous peoples are still concentrated at the bottom of a
significantly uneven class structure. Consequently, political debates have emerged over issues
such as territorial autonomy, legal pluralism, citizenship and multiculturalism – by ethnic
movements and peasants in particular (Yashar 1999: 77). Generally speaking, these
movements question the liberal and democratic institutions upon which nearly all Latin
American countries are founded. With respect to this region at least, it is evident that the
concept of indigeneity and state-society relations in general, are far from resolved and
remains questioned.
Indigeneity is also a highly relevant issue once examining Bolivia, as it is regarded
as one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Latin America (Flesken 2013: 336).
According to the national consensus of 2001 – the latest data available on ethnical
classification – 62 percent of the then 8,2 million Bolivians self-identified as belonging to one
of over 30 indigenous groups (Albó 2008: 13; Flesken 2013: 336). Once a similar survey was
held a hundred years earlier, specific ethnic groups were not poll options and thus, 51 percent
self-identified as indigenous and 27 percent argued they were mestizos (of mixed heritage) – a
racial categorization that has never been reintroduced in Bolivian census’ since then (Albó
2008: 13). As these numbers exemplifies, indigeneity is not a ‘one-way-street’ concept.
Rather, it has been the heart of political debates ever since colonialism – and arguably,
continues to be the locus of political disputes until present-day. Thus, it makes sense to argue,
as Postero (2007: 11) does, that it is “ […] a contingent category negotiated by individual and
collective subjects…” What this essentially means is discussed in what follows.
2.1 Indigeneity under the colonial era
As an ethnic category, indigeneity – or, as Postero (2007: 12) terms it, “indigenousness” – can
only be understood in light of the social, political and economic relations and contexts that
produce it. The categorization of indigenous peoples began in the early 1500s, once the Inca
21 empire was overthrown and the Spanish elite organized colonial administrations in what was
then called Upper Peru – now, Bolivia (Flesken 2013: 338, Postero 2007: 25). Despite the
great ethnic diversity indigenous peoples comprise, a sharp distinction was drawn between
Spaniards on the one hand, and native Andean peoples on the other, whom were ‘lumped
together’ and defined simply as “Indians” (Flesken 2013: 338; Postero 2007: 3).
Under the Spanish Crown, a dual society was established, and two separate legal and
institutional systems were implemented: the república de los espanoles (the Spanish
Republic) for colonists, and the república de indios (the Indian Republic) for Indians (Postero
2007: 27). The latter one was further organized under the so-called cacicazgo system, in
which Indians were allowed to hold and use communal property and maintain the right to
local self-governance in return for labor force and the mita – the required tribute tax (Albó
2008: 17; Postero 2007: 27).
Following Postero (2007: 28), this dual society structure was combined with yet
another system – the sistema de castes (the caste system) – in which racial categorization was
justified by a biological discourse about race in which people were ranked according to purity
of blood (Postero 2007: 28). Not surprisingly, Spaniards were at the top (considered pureblooded people); castas (mixed-blood people) were in the middle; and Indians and Africans
were at the bottom. In fact, as Albó (2008: 15, 17) notes, a central debate ranged in the early
years of colonialism as to whether indigenous peoples were at all human beings – a case in
point which clearly marked their degrading status, and also legitimated the usage of yet other
labels, such as indios, indígenas and originarios (descended from the original inhabitants).
Indigenous peoples were considered uncivilized and backward, and thus, were not
entitled to rights – arguably, apart from the partial royal protection offered in exchange for
labor force and tribute tax (Postero 2007: 28). Initially, the term Indian referred to those
whom were members of an Indian community and thus, was biologically anchored. Through
the process of mestizaje (the mix of white, indigenous and even black) however, new racial
categorizations emerged, and social and cultural markers such as language, dress and
economic status increasingly came to define indigeneity (Albó 2008: 17; Gotkowitz 2007:
13). Castes such as mulattos (mix of black and white people), mestizos (the mix of white and
indigenous peoples) and zambos (the mix of mulattos and mestizos) (Mignolo 2009: 73) but to
mention a few exist until present – a proof of the complexities embedded within the concept
of indigeneity.
Through what Tristan Platt (1982) termed ‘the colonial pact’ or ‘the tributary pact’ –
which basically refers to Indian labor and tribute – Indians were fundamentally a fiscal
22 category in which their obligations also defined their identity vis-à-vis the colonial powers
(Postero 2007: 27). Combined with the racial categorization, this system thus served a dual
purpose: created by the Spanish elite as a mean to discriminate and control the indigenous
masses, it was simultaneously a legal mechanism onto which the Crown maintained its
economic base (Postero 2007: 27).
2.2 Indigeneity under the liberal era
The concept of indigeneity is not a straightforward and linear one – as the discussion thus far
pinpoints. It is also an illusion, according to Albó (2008), to conclude that a white minority
constructed racial categories and class-based political cleavages while indigenous peoples
“…simply adopted a passive, pre-political posture” (16). The uprisings that eventually led to
Bolivia’s’ independence in 1825 – and the struggles that followed – were indeed political in
character. Simultaneously, an interesting and almost paradoxical combination of roles and
indigenous identities also found place, in which the concept of indigeneity was reconstructed
once again.
By and large, it was the weakening of the “colonial pact” that eventually pushed
Bolivian into its republican liberal era, stimulated by the uprisings of the Kataris movement –
a group of Andean natives whom attempted to break with the colonial order and establish
Indian sovereignty in the late 1700s (Albó 2008:15; Postero 2007: 30). Whilst the Spanish
Crown put down the uprisings, the “colonial pact” system was nonetheless severely
weakened, albeit not abolished. Thus, in order to formally break with colonialism, the
caciques – indigenous authorities whom operated as mediators between Indian communities
and the Crown – increasingly started to cooperate with the Creole elites (a subaltern,
marginalized group of Spanish descent) (Albó 2008: 62; Postero 2007: 30). As Mignolo
(2009: 62) argues, the Creoles had – since the seventeenth century – taken on what he terms
“the colonial wound” and alongside indigenous peoples, they increasingly “ […] took over the
conflict of the difference, the colonial difference, racial, political, social and economic”.
Seeking to overthrow the Spanish rule, the Creole elite justified their political actions by
flagging the degrading treatment of Indians (Postero 2007: 32). Paradoxically however, and
very well formulated by Mignolo (2009: 64): “ […] after independence, the Creole found
themselves in power and no longer subalterns of the Spanish colonial elites. They became,
indeed, the postcolonial elite”. Albeit in a new political context – influenced by European
ideology and philosophy – the Creoles continued to exclude and discriminate Indians. As
23 Mignolo (2009: 74) argues, the traces of colonialism were not left behind: rather, Latin
America adopted what he terms “internal colonialism”. As such, the region has yet to free
itself from the colonial wound.
The Indian tribute and servitude were not formally abolished until the late nineteenth
century, when community landholding was made illegal and transformed into state property
as part of the 1874 land reform (Postero 2007: 32-33). Indigeneity was again questioned by
the republican liberal elite, and took center stage in political debates, policies and practices.
The main paradox of the liberal era lies precisely in the duality of universal definitions of
“free” labor and citizenship rights, and the embedded limits to those exact standards – a
solution to the “Indian Question” that made it possible for elites to further exclude and
discriminate indigenous peoples from the political arena (Postero 2007: 32). For instance,
Indians were offered citizenship by becoming either colones (laborers) or small landholders,
but the right to vote was tied to literacy and ownership of land – privileges that indigenous
peoples had been deprived of during the colonial era. Whilst free from servitude as such, most
Indians could not afford to buy land and thus, were forced to work the lands of others – a
situation that simultaneously deprived them of universal suffrage. Consequently, many
Indians fled to urban zones, and made up yet another racial category – the cholos (mixed race
class) (Postero 2007: 33). Due to the structure of the state, indigeneity became restructured
and further blurred once again.
The overall outcome of the liberal republican era was numerous political reforms,
which produced, each in their own right, severely exclusionary effects (Postero 2007: 35). It
might be argued that this is best understood by looking at the philosophy of Locke, Mill and
Darwin – amongst others – as their doctrines of equal rights based on rational capabilities and
the superiority of the white race increasingly gained ground in Bolivia and elsewhere in Latin
America, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century (Albó 2008: 18; Postero: 2007: 35).
Indians and mestizos (those of mixed heritage) alike were seen as uncivilized savages, and a
causal link was drawn between their backwardness and the unfulfilled processes of
modernization and progress. Following Postero (2007: 35), political inclusion was based on a
set of rational capacities that all individuals initially share. Indians however – uncivilized and
uneducated as they were – could not actualize that rationality, and the elite thus excluded
Indians from full citizenship rights on the basis of pre-determined cultural characteristics
(Postero 2007: 35).
Marisol de la Cadena (2010) puts forth a similar, albeit slightly different argument.
She notes that liberalism and modern scientific paradigms created a distinction between
24 “Humanity” and “Nature” – a separation that is non-existing within indigenous peoples
understanding of reality until present – and emphasized instead knowledge and reason as the
basis for political inclusion and participation. Politics, it was assumed, had to distinguish itself
from earth-practices and “other-than-human-things”, such as animals, plants and the
landscape. Essentially, the relational conditions that make life in the Andes and which for
more than 500 years have been the corner stone of indigenous peoples worldview were thus
banned from the political sphere. Indians relations to Pachamama (Mother Earth) were
considered nonscientific and reduced to mere beliefs rather than truth, and accordingly,
Indians were deemed unworthy to engage in politics (de la Cadena 2010: 341-346).
As such, the republican liberal elites did not only practice exclusion of Indians through
various political reforms and policies, but also reconstructed a philosophy of thought and
profoundly fueled a mindset of “otherness”. Thus, under the liberal era, the defining feature
of indigeneity was still that of difference.
Fueled by the tragedies of the Chaco War, Indians and mestizos were brought closer
together in a common struggle against the continual racial inequalities of the oligarchy
(Postero 2007: 37). During the war, Indians and miners had organized into trade and peasant
unions, and once the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionaria (MNR) emerged and
eventually overthrew the oligarchy, the Indian peasantry was increasingly brought onto the
stage as allies for political change (Postero 2007: 38). Once the old political system fell due to
the 1952 Revolution, a corporatist party structure emerged and the concept of indigeneity took
on a different, albeit still, discriminatory path.
As part of the 1953 agrarian reform, a new social and political class structure emerged,
in which indigenous peoples were re-codified as campesinos (peasants) instead of Indians.
Whilst the state sought to cast aside the ethnic categories and assimilate its indigenous
population into a wide-scale nation-building project, in reality this categorization only
reproduced an already existing discriminatory pattern: Indians were offered citizenship,
universal suffrage, national education and full membership into the national economy, but
they were still denied the rights of autonomy and self-governance (Postero 2007: 39, Yashar
1999: 81). As such, the MNR ensured its control and continued domination over Indians and
thus did not overcome racism. Rather, the term campesino (peasant) was simply a
restructuring of otherness, wrapped in new layers.
Scholars have assumed that the increased registration of peasant federations and the
turning of Indians into peasants stripped indigenous ethnicity of its salience. Yashar (1999)
argues however, that the state’s ability to remake and control these social sectors were never
25 as strong as originally anticipated. She holds that large areas of the country operated ‘beyond
the reach of the state’: through patron-clientelist relations that these reforms offered, Indians
increasingly gained access to a variety of social services (Yashar 1999: 82). Additionally,
redistribution of land to registered peasant communities strengthen rather than weakened
Indians community practices at the local level and thus, provided a neat space for indigenous
peoples culture, customs and political practices to prosper (Yashar 1999: 83). Further, a
dynamic dualism emerged, in which location became the determining factor for the making of
identities. As Yashar (1999: 83) argues: “ […] for the state, Indians assumed identities as
peasants; within the communities, peasants assumed their identities as Indians”.
Overall, as the MNR redefined Indians into campesinos (peasants) and further
reproduced the discriminatory patterns of the past, what Flesken (2013: 339) terms
“reindianization”, emerged throughout the 1960s and 70s. In addition to previous claims of
political and economic inclusion, Aymara and Quechua activists within a number of peasant
and trade unions increasingly begun to demand the inclusion of ideology and indigenous
identity in politics, thus spurring a wide range of public debates and uprisings in the years to
follow (Flesken 2013: 339). Throughout the 1980s and 90s, this was also sparked by an
international discourse of indigenous rights, and the category of ‘indigenous’ became the
dominant one (Postero 2013: 109). Coupled also with the introduction of neoliberal reforms –
which advocated individual rights at the expense of corporate organizations (Yashar 1999: 85)
– indigeneity as collective identity and action, gained ground (Flesken 2013: 339). As
Flesken (2013: 340) notes, “ […] the rhetoric for multiculturalism gave incentives for
mobilization in cultural terms”, thus marking the beginning of Bolivia’s plurinational era.
2.3 Indigeneity in the plurinational era
Particularly since the 1990s, indigenous peoples mobilizing power has had a significant
impact on national-level politics (Flesken 2013: 340). During Sánchez de Lozada’s first term
(1993-1997), Bolivia was reborn into a “multiethnic” and “pluricultural” state, and a number
of reforms were implemented that increasingly sought to incorporate the indigenous
population into the political sphere. Amongst the most important changes were the concept of
TCO (tierra comunitaria de origen, or indigenous territory), which recognizes the main
attributes of indigenous peoples and their territory; the reformation of the educational system,
in which the principles of interculturality and bilingual teaching were approved; and the
restructuring of local politics, which increasingly strengthened municipalities (Albó 2008: 25-
26 26; Flesken 2013: 340). Also important of course, was the entering of Evo Morales and his
Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) into national politics – a political party that, according to
Flesken (2013: 340), was neither narrowly class nor ethnicity oriented.
Arguably, the concept of indigeneity embarked on a road to success once Evo Morales
was elected president in 2005. Becoming Bolivia’s first self-declared indigenous president, he
has come to represent the inclusion of indigenous peoples – both discursively and politically –
and to many, the election of Morales’ has also marked the beginning of the return to the
indigenous era: pachakuti (Flesken 2013: 343).
Above all, this is reflected in the rewriting of Bolivia’s constitution. Known today as
the new constitution, the document was approved in January 2009 in a referendum with 61,4
percent of the vote (Flesken 2013: 343). According to Article 30, a nation or people is defined
as being indígena originario campesino (IOC, indigenous original peasant) and further as:
“ […] any human collective that shares a cultural identity, language, historical tradition,
institutions, territories, and cosmovision, whose existence is prior to the Spanish colonial
invasion” (Flesken 2013: 343). It assumes that certain characteristics and attributes are
unchangeable to indigenous peoples, and additionally, that these features are held and shared
by individuals, but simultaneously actualized collectively. Thus, the new constitution
increasingly contests the traditional, universal notion of citizenship, and seeks to bridge a gap
between individual rights on the one hand, and collective once on the other.
As the new constitution exemplifies, policies under the Morales’ government have
brought ethnicity back onto the political stage. Thus, in the 21st century, a reconfiguration of
politics is taking place – not only in Bolivia, but also in Latin America as a whole (de la
Cadena 2010: 334). It might indeed be argued, as de la Cadena (2010: 335) does, that
indigenous politics exceed “politics as we know it”.
However, just as the “corporatist” and “neoliberal citizenship regimes” (Yashar 1999)
spurred debates, the shift towards ethnic politics also causes public disputes – most notably by
non-indigenous Bolivians whom increasingly feel excluded and discriminated at the expense
of indigenous peoples (Flesken 2013: 344). On the one hand, it is argued that the new
constitution has reified a distinction between indigenous and non-indigenous Bolivians – a
distinction that hardly exists any more (Flesken 2013: 344). On the other hand however, the
dissatisfaction amongst non-indigenous Bolivians might simply be a result of their weakened
social and economic influence. Whilst a middle-class indeed exists in today’s Bolivia, classdistinctions have nonetheless been reduced due to Morales’ cultural and democratic
revolutionary policies, thus causing those previously in power to oppose Morales’ “cultural
27 and democratic revolution”. As Flesken argues (2013: 344), “ […] the institutionalization of
ethic boundaries through the new constitution has led to more, rather than less, contestation of
indigeneity in the social and political sphere”.
Additionally, a shift has occurred since the 1980s, in which indigeneity is no longer a
language of resistance but instead of governance and rights (Postero 2013: 114). Whilst
indigenous peoples previously fought for increased political inclusion and sought to break the
chains of colonialism, the current period is characterized by demands for access to state
resources and territorial rights – claims rooted in the state’s failure to roll back neoliberalism,
as was promised already in the early 2000s. Thus, contestations over indigeneity and ‘ethnic
politics’ are yet to be silenced in Bolivia. A rather surprising paradox has become evident:
while the concept of indigeneity was brought onto the national stage by indigenous peoples
themselves, those are also the ones whom once again question its multiple meanings and
implications. In light of the current state structure, this paradox will be further explored
throughout the rest of my thesis.
3.0 Natural resource extraction in Bolivia
Apart from the complexities regarding the concept of indigeneity, my problem statement
explicitly highlights natural resource extraction as a source of dispute between indigenous
peoples and the Bolivian state. In what follows, I discuss natural resource extraction within its
proper historical and theoretical framework, and place Bolivia in light of that outline.
3.1 The politics of natural resources
Because Bolivia is home to abundant quantities of natural resources – primarily located in the
tropical forests of the Amazonian-Andean interface – extractivism and numerous power
struggles for control over these marks the country’s history (Hindery 2013: ix).
The foundation of a new economic world order was founded already in the colonial
era, in which the revenues from silver contributed to the maintenance of the Spanish empire,
and eventually also spurred international trade and global mercantilism. Rubber became the
country’s most valuable commodity in the late nineteenth century, only to be replaced by tin
from Andean mines in the early twentieth century. Although spurring the processes of
industrialization and economic growth, these resources also enriched political elites and made
corruption a widespread phenomenon. In the early 1900s the production of oil started and
consequently, extractivism became a defining feature of Bolivia’s state institutions and
28 economic policies – a pattern that characterizes the country until this day (Hecht 2013:
Foreword; Hindery 2013: 22-26).
Rather than being an easy route towards economic growth and development, Bolivia’s
natural resources have generated severe power struggles exemplified by control shifting back
and forth between the state and foreign oil companies – and with the United States a
continuous mediator time and again (Hindery 2013: 22). Following Hindery (2013: 22), USled neocolonialism began already in 1921, when concessions were transferred from the state
to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. Arguably, this marked the starting point for
privatization and extraction of Bolivia’s hydrocarbon resources, and the privatizationnationalization pendulum has been swinging back and forth ever since.
In 1936 – primarily through the creation of the state oil company, Yacimientos
Petrolíferos Fiscaleros Bolivianos (YPFB) – the government renationalized the oil industry
and accordingly, regained control over the country’s resources. However, this proved to be
short lived, and president Estenssoro and his leftist Revolutionary Nationalist Movement
(MNR) were forced to reopen Bolivia to foreign investment in hydrocarbons by 1956.
Following Hindery (2013: 23-24), several factors explain this reopening: first, as president
Estenssoro and the MNR had nationalized the mining sector after the 1952 Revolution, the
US responded by sanctioning mineral imports – at that point, one of Bolivia’s most important
sources of income. Second, the tendencies towards complete nationalization of natural
resources made government officials in both the United States and Europe portray Bolivia as
moving towards protectionism. Consequently, international pressure and threats of economic
sanctions eventually forced the Bolivian government to reopen its oil industry to foreign
investments, leaving YPFB in direct competition with international oil companies such as
Gulf Oil, Tesoro Petroleum and Occidental Petroleum. And although the public pushed for
negotiations between the government and foreign investors – the US in particular – these all
failed. By 1972, as General Hugo Banzer Suárez permitted joint operation contracts and
concessions to eighteenth different companies for thirty years, Bolivia’s oil industry had once
again become privatized (Hindery 2013: 22-24).
Throughout the 1980s, a variety of factors – most notably a severe decline in oil
exports from 1979 onwards and thus a tremendous increase in the country’s debt – pushed
Bolivia first into a period of Structural Adjustment and then into implementation of neoliberal
reforms. Eventually, it became inevitable for General Banzer Suárez and his administration to
adapt to the neoliberal reforms imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF). With a potential economic crisis at its doorstep, Bolivia sought all sorts of
29 structural adjustment and stabilizing policies to control inflation and attract foreign
investment – most notably through measures of “shock therapy” prescribed by the wellknown economist Jeffrey Sachs (Hindery 2013: 25-26). Paradoxically, while only partially
resulting in the privatization of Bolivia’s hydrocarbon sector, the neoliberal reforms adopted
in the early 1980s nevertheless continued to create intense debate also in the years that
followed (Hindery 2013: 27-28; Postero 2005: 73).
Above all, the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s led to a capitalization – or a partial
privatization – of the Bolivian economy in general, and the hydrocarbon sector in particular.
To promote private investment in the sector, laws and regulations were rewritten in favor of
transnational corporations throughout the 1980s, and the government – pressured by the US,
the World Bank and the IMF in particular – committed itself to the process of privatization by
reducing royalties and taxes in all “new” fields. This certainly increased the incentives for
transnational corporations’ continued presence in the country (Hindery 2013: 27).
However, Bolivia’s transition towards global capitalism had just begun. When
Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada – known as “Goni” (Postero 2005: 73) – assumed presidency in
1993, he further reduced the role of the state by legalizing private investments in state-owned
enterprises – YPFB included. This was primarily carried out through the so-called Energy
Triangle, a World Bank-financed capitalization law which favored transnational companies’
future investments over those of the Bolivian state. The Hydrocarbon Law – authorized in
1996 – is also striking in this regard. Contrary to previous decades, in which the state and
foreign companies had benefitted equally from the exploration and production of oil and gas,
the law established an “attractive and competitive tax system” (Hindery 2013: 39), which cut
state royalties and taxes from 50% to 18% in all “new” fields. While these “new” fields
already existed they had yet to be certified for exploration. In reality, the authorization of the
Hydrocarbon Law exemplifies the ways in which the World Bank maintained its influence
upon the government mainly to further its own interests (Hindery 2013: 27-41; Postero 2005:
77-78).
By the late the 1990s, Bolivia had become caught in a spiral of capitalization – a
multilateral development strategy imposed by international financial institutions and banks in
countries all across Latin America. This arguably, benefitted all investors but the country
itself. And although a decentralization of the state promoted through institutional reforms and
social policies helped to increase popular participation and expand the populations’ access to
certain public services – primarily health and education – such policies were never
implemented strategically nor efficiently coordinated by the government. Thus, increased
30 levels of poverty and inequality followed suit (Wanderley et al. 2012: 176-178). In the end,
the reforms adopted in the neoliberal era (1985-2005) were nothing but an illusory discourse
wrapped in vested interests (Hindery 2013: 20, 27-33). As this became more and more clear
to the public, an up swell of protest emerged in Bolivia throughout the 1990s and early 2000,
turning the country into “ […] one of the most important battlegrounds over neoliberal
strategies” (Postero 2005: 73).
This resistance is most notable with regards to the now famous Guerra del Aqua
(Water War) and Guerra del Gas (Gas War), which took place in 2000 and 2003,
respectively. Rather than leveling out the colonial power relations between the elites and the
indigenous peoples, the neoliberal reforms implemented by Goni mostly benefited Bolivia’s
entrepreneurial class. Because of a dramatic reduction of public sector employment, poverty
increased throughout the 1990s, and caused a wave of dissatisfaction amongst the population
(Medeiros 2001: 408, Postero 2013: 73-74). According to Hindery (2013: 31), extreme
poverty increased from 36,5 percent in 1997 to a staggering 41,3 percent in 2002, primarily as
a result of the state’s unequal distribution of its revenues from oil and gas.
In 2000, growing resentment towards the negative impacts of global capitalism had
reached its heights, ultimately resulting in the Water War. Protesting against the governments’
scheduled privatization of water companies in La Paz and Cochabamba, popular actors and
peasants organized and forced the transnational corporation to withdraw from the projects by
claiming water being a social good and a human right (Hindery 2013: 58-62; Postero 2005:
73). Similar uprisings, ranging from demonstrations against the eradication of coca to protests
against laws prohibiting blockades occurred throughout the country in the years that followed,
eventually culminating into the 2003 Gas War – a violent rebellion, which left approximately
eighty people dead and several hundred wounded (Hindery 2013: 60-61; Postero 2005: 74-75;
Wanderley et al. 2012: 191).
Goni’s controversial plan of building a pipeline through Chile, in which Bolivia’s
natural gas would be easily exported to the US and Mexico had sparked the conflict. Yet
again – as with the neoliberal reforms previously implemented – it soon became evident that
Bolivia herself would benefit the least from this proposal compared to other consortiums’.
Consequently, protests arose all throughout the country, with popular movements from a
variety of sectors demanding a rewriting of the constitution and the 1996 Hydrocarbon Law,
as well as the nationalization and industrialization of the hydrocarbon sector (Hindery 2013:
60-61; Postero 2005: 74).
31 As with previous conflicts throughout Bolivia’s history, protests erupted because of
inconsistencies between the government and its population for control over natural resources.
With the Gas War, Goni never managed to respond to the public’s claim of abandoning the
neoliberal model and renationalize the country’s hydrocarbon sector. On October 17, 2003,
Goni filed his resignation as president – in retrospect deemed a victory for the indigenous
peoples and their struggle for human rights, self-determination and political participation
(Hindery 2013: 60; Postero 2005: 73-74).
The popular movements’ uprisings in the late 1990s and early 2000 marked ‘the
beginning of the end’ of the neoliberal discourse that had prevailed in Bolivia over the past
twenty years. The move towards nationalism – or post-neoliberalism – had officially begun,
particularly marked by the election of Evo Morales in December 2005. By proclaiming the
final end to unequal race relations, promising a wide-ranging inclusion of the indigenous
population into state politics, along with publicly announcing all of Bolivia’s natural oil and
gas reserves as state property by the 1 of May 2006, Morales truly was the opposite of his
predecessors. Also, by 2009 he had adopted both the United Nations (UN) Declarations of
Indigenous Peoples Rights and the country’s new constitution, which proudly establishes
Bolivia as a “multicultural” and “plurinational” independent state (Hindery 2013: 148-151).
On the face of it, neoliberalism was over.
Evo Morales has defined his political project “a decolonizing democratic revolution”
(Hindery 2013: 149). However, the accumulation of capital is made possible primarily
through the forces of a capitalist market – in much the same ways as previously. This is
exemplified through the approval of the new Hydrocarbon Law no. 3058 of 2005 – adopted
by Carlos Mesa as he assumed the presidency in 2003 – followed by the nationalization
decree (‘Heroes of the Chaco’, no. 28701), passed by the Morales administration in May 2006
(Wanderley et al. 2012: 194). Both emphasize a restructuring of the hydrocarbon sector by
presenting a framework in which the state controls the entire production chain – primarily
through the state oil company YPFB – and attracts foreign direct investment to finance new
economic and social policies (Wanderley et al. 2012: 195). Additionally, a more equitable tax
regime has been introduced through the so-called Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons (IDH), which
benefits the Bolivian state to a greater extend than has been the case with the former 1996
Hydrocarbon Law.
However, whilst clearly beneficial to state control, an over-reliance on non-renewable
resource rents has forced the Morales administration to preserve the core elements of a
neoliberal-capitalist model by continuing on the path of extractivism – thus repeating the
32 extractive traps of the past. Accordingly, market-oriented policies seem to trump
considerations of environmental protection and indigenous peoples rights to selfdetermination and participation in decision-making processes related to the extraction of
natural resources on their territories. Clearly, this is contradictory to the promises enshrined in
the new Constitution, in which respect for Mother Earth and Vivir Bien (“living well”) are
explicitly stated. It also complicates the governments’ promise to inform and consult
indígenas (Indians), originarios (those belonging to an indigenous group) and campesinos
(peasants) in processes of exploitation that threatens their livelihood and autonomy. This is
why a prevalent feature of the Bolivian society is still that of unresolved tensions.
3.2 Linkages between economic performance and natural resource wealth
For the past fifty years, scholars within the social sciences have debated how natural-resource
wealth influences economic development (Ross 1999: 297). Conventional wisdom has largely
regarded the former as advantageous for the latter, as the works of development theorist
Walter Rostow (1960) clearly exemplifies (Logan & McNeish 2012: 9, Rosser 2006: 7). As
part of the wider modernization literature, which was particularly influential during the 1960s,
Rostow famously argued that the path towards modernization went through certain universal
‘stages’ of growth (Peet & Hartwick 2009: 129). It was commonly assumed that natural
resource wealth would push societies into a ‘take-off’ stage and that underdeveloped countries
would eventually become technological developed and industrialized by copying what
Britain, Australia and the United States had previously done once they achieve their high
levels of modernization (Logan & McNeish 2012: 9, Peet & Hartwick 2009: 127-129, Ross
1999: 301).
More recently however, a large body of literature has been put forth that increasingly
question the assumptions underlying such a transition. The failure of the third wave of
democracy (Huntington 1991) – to which Bolivia was also a part – seem to suggest, “…that
states with abundant resource wealth performs less well than their resource-poor
counterparts” (Ross 1999: 297). Rather than becoming substantive democracies with stable
and well-functioning institutions, this literature points to the negative political and socioeconomic outcomes of natural-resource abundance, such as the increased likelihood of civil
war, low levels of democratic deepening and more generally, poor economic performance
(Logan & McNeish 2012: 9, Rosser 2006: 7). Given these empirical evidences, it is widely
assumed today – within academia and the international community alike – that natural-
33 resource wealth complicates rather than ease the route towards development, and that
countries characterized by natural resource endowments are locked within what is commonly
known as ‘the resource curse’.
Since the late 1980s onwards, the resource curse has been applied almost exclusively
to countries of the Global South (Logan & McNeish 2012: 9). As the name implies, the entire
concept points to the different ‘curses’ that seem inevitable to avoid for resource-rich
countries, such as the inability to use natural resources to boost economic growth, and the
failure of state institutions to distribute the revenues from natural resources effectively and by
means of political equality (Logan & McNeish: 10). There is however, not a single
explanation as to what initially causes a condition of the so-called resource curse to occur.
Rather, several theories and subsequent recommendations have been put forth that highlights
different aspects of the linkages between economic performance and natural resource
abundance.
The earliest works by development economics argued that developing states were
characterized by an unfortunate imbalance in production – surplus labor on the one hand, but
shortage of investible capital on the other. By promoting development strategies based on
resource exports however, it was assumed that these imbalances could easily be controlled
for. Additionally, such strategies would attract foreign investments and enable resource-rich
governments to collect revenues and hence, make it easier to provide public goods (Ross
1999: 301). From the mid-1950s onwards however, skeptics – most notably structuralists such
as Prebisch and Singer – increasingly begun to question these assumptions, and argued that
resource-exporting states would become even poorer once competing with rich industrialized
states, due primarily to a decline in the terms of trade (Ross 1999: 301).
According to this school of thought, Third World economies were too different
compared to the already well-functioning and developed Western economies and thus, a
universal neoclassical approach, which works according to certain market principles, was
deemed inapplicable in the Latin American context (Peet & Hartwick 2009: 64-65). Prebisch
in particular, argued that underdevelopment in Latin America was precisely the result of its
emphasis on primary exports, and that its peripheral position in the global economy further
weakened its chances of achieving industrialization and progress. Thus, his solution to
improve Latin America’s terms of trade was by means of structural change, in which import
substitution industrialization (ISI) became amongst the main strategies. In the years following
World War II, nearly all Latin American countries – Bolivia included – adopted this strategy,
and initially, industry grew rapidly as a result of these economic interventions. Over time
34 however, critical voices – particularly within more conventional development circles – begun
to argue that ISI produced high cost and low-quality industrial goods, and that agriculture was
largely neglected in the process. In overall terms, although the ISI strategy served Third
World countries well and enabled industrialization that, arguably, would never have happened
in the classical liberal tradition of free trade, open borders and no-state intervention, it
nonetheless gained a rather bad reputation and was abandoned as a development strategy
already in the 1970s (Peet & Hartwick 2009: 64-68).
Rather than highlighting the importance of structural change per se, other development
promoters argued that international commodity markets suffered from unusually sharp price
fluctuations and thus, were unstable (Logan & McNeish 2012: 10, Ross 1999: 301).
According to this logic, the instability of the international market could easily be transferred
to those developing states reliant upon commodity exports, thus weakening their domestic
economies and further affecting their means to attract private investment from abroad –
usually their primary source of income (Logan & McNeish 2012: 10, Ross 1999: 10).
Yet, whilst the terms of trade for most primary commodities have fallen since the
1980s onwards – due primarily to a rising volume of commodity exports, but caused also by
the debt crisis in the 1970s; the collapse of international commodity agreements, and more
recently; by the fall of the former Soviet Union – the problem of linkages between economic
performance and natural resource endowments has persisted (Ross 1999: 302, 305). Thus, a
more recent explanation of the recourse curse has been the so-called “Dutch Disease” – a
condition in which a boom in resources leads to an appreciation of a country’s real exchange
rate. Following this logic, a resource-boom alters economic growth and further weakens
manufacturing and subsequent sectors of the economy, most notably agriculture (Logan &
McNeish 2012: 10, Ross 1999: 305-306).
Regardless of the various theories and terminologies associated with the resource
curse, a general consensus has nonetheless come to define them all, namely that an abundance
of natural resources is the root-cause of violent conflict (Logan & McNeish 2012: 10,
McNeish 2010: 1). Whilst this acknowledgement reached its heights in the post-cold war
period in particular, more recently however, it has also resulted in the acceptance of the
paradox of plenty. In overall terms, the paradox of plenty points out the puzzling truth that
although countries of the Global South are extractive economies endowed with strategic
natural wealth, they nonetheless cannot seem to avoid neither violence or war: the majority of
conflict-prone and war-ravaged states – including those recently emerging from violent
conflict – are both extractive economies and located in the southern hemisphere (McNeish
35 2010: 1). In addition, and contrary to the overall assumptions of economic growth and
industrialization depicted by the modernization literature, states in the Global South remain
both underdeveloped and politically unstable (McNeish 2010: 1).
3.3 Bolivia and its extractive economic industries
As Bebbington (2009: 14) argues, throughout Latin America, “governments of all political
hues seem primarily concerned to make the very most out of extraction”. Also in Bolivia, the
MAS government continues to rely on an extractive development model and seem to believe
it can escape both ‘the resource curse’ and ‘the paradox of plenty’ by applying a set of
policies that, arguably, reflect indigenous peoples claims for cultural and political recognition
– what de la Cardena (2010) labels “ethnic politics”. Yet, recent uprisings – most notably the
violations related to the TIPNIS case in 2011-2012 – and the fact that Bolivia is still
considered a ‘lower middle income level’ country2, suggests that Bolivia has yet to escape
both of the abovementioned hypothesis. The abundance of natural resources is still a rootcause of violent conflicts, and the government continues to pursue what I have elsewhere
referred to as an “Andean-Amazonian capitalism” (Hindery 2013), thus being precisely the
extractive economy to which the paradox of plenty describes.
In Bolivia, its extractive frontiers have kept on expanding since the early 2000s
onwards, and plans to speed up gas production in particular have intensified since the Morales
administration took power in 2005 (Bebbington 2009: 15). Thus, and following Bebbington
(2009: 14), 55 percent of today’s national territory “ […] is considered to be of potential
hydrocarbon interest”. On the one hand; the Morales administration’s rationale for such
interest rests upon its need to finance national social policies and cash-transfer programs for
its citizenry, on the other; increased extraction is indeed due to a world economy that largely
demands and depends upon natural resources to uphold consumerism.
With regards to the former, following the 2005 hydrocarbon laws and the
nationalization process which begun in 2006, between 2006 and 2010, the revenues from gas
increased from an averaged $1.4 billion, versus only $283 million between 2001 and 2005
(Hindery 2013: 153). Through the establishment of the new Direct Hydrocarbon Tax
(impuesto directo a los hidrocarburos, IDH), regional government’s share of hydrocarbon
rents have significantly increased, thus benefitting the Bolivian citizenry to a greater extent
than during the neoliberal period (Hindery 2013: 153, McNeish 2010: 12). On the other hand,
2 The World Bank: http://data.worldbank.org/country/bolivia?display=graph - 24.04.14.
36 5 percent of gas revenues (or 1.6 percent of net hydrocarbon revenues) were initially
supposed to be distributed towards the Development Fund for Indigenous Peoples and Peasant
Communities to fund projects by Indigenous communities and parent organizations. Whilst
the Fund is still operative, it is nonetheless perceived of as being corruptly managed and
biased in favor of central governments rather than directly benefitting regional and local
municipalities (Hindery 2013: 153-154). With regards to the latter, the global economy is still
driven forth by capitalist claims for economic growth, modernization and industrialization –
features that the Morales administration has further developed, albeit in its own seminationalized and ethno-indigenous way (Hindery 2013: 3-4).
While under the Morales administration, social policies are better than during earlier
regimes, the central problems related to macro-politics nonetheless persist (Hecht 2013: xi).
The government continues to rely upon an extractivist development model that – supposedly
– benefit both the nation state and its indigenous population (Bebbington 2009: 15), whilst
also promising to roll back neoliberalism and comply with the new constitution, which in
2009 recognized indigenous peoples rights to the greatest extent worldwide (SchillingVacaflor 2013: 2012).
Given these contradictions, it is hardly surprising that Morales’s political agenda has
come under great pressure recently, and that the concept of indigeneity thus continues to be
redefined and negotiated (Postero 2013: 107-119). This is particularly evident with regards to
the new constitution, in which the indigenous population is recognized as nations and peoples
(Flesken 2013: 343) and are given rights to self-determination and self-governance, autonomy
and free, prior and informed consent in extraction-processes on indigenous territory – rights
that, in overall terms and for various reasons, in practice remains non-complied to by the
government. As Schilling-Vacaflor (2013: 202-219) argues, in any consultation process,
indigenous norms and practices have the potential of bringing incomprehensible local
knowledge to the forefront – insights that inevitably can strengthen Bolivia’s democracy in
the long run – but the centralized power of the state prevents such decision-making from
being properly anchored in practice. Consequently, contestations over what the extractivist
development model can in fact accomplish is thus further strengthened and intensified by the
state structure itself. To this I will return once discussing my findings, as several of my
informants view non-compliance with national and international agreements a major
weakness of the administration currently in office.
What these insights suggest, is that the linkages between economic performance and
natural resource abundance in Bolivia are still problematic – both for the state and its
37 indigenous population. Thus, with reference to the abovementioned challenges, a valid
question arises: is the resource curse sufficient in explaining the current complexities of these
problems? Whilst economists and political scientists have gradually incorporated ideas from
each other and attempted to both revise and add more variables into the analysis, more
recently however, others have begun to question the factual applicability of the resource curse
and the quality of the data onto which the hypothesis rests (Logan and McNeish 2012: 13-16).
Although it is still widely accepted that resource-rich countries in the Global South suffer
from various negative development effects, the linkages between economic performance and
natural resource abundance are nonetheless not as straight forward as originally anticipated.
Quoted in Logan & McNeish (2012: 15), “…the relationship is anything but as conclusive, or
direct, as the ‘resource curse’ terminology would suggest”.
According to Rosser (2006: 7), present-day ‘resource curse’ literature has thus far
failed to address a number of issues: the role of social forces that shape development
outcomes in resource rich-countries have been largely neglected; the literature does not take
into account that – although the majority of resource abundant countries have performed bad
– some have also done quite well in developmental terms, and lastly; the recommendations
derived from the various theories fails to acknowledge what he terms “the issue of political
feasibility (Rosser 2006: 7). He also argues that the current resource curse literature holds a
reductionist position, by which he means that the various explanations of development
performance tend to focus solely on countries’ natural resource base (their size and nature)
rather than acknowledging that historical and structural factors have also shaped countries
developmental outcomes (Rosser 2006: 7).
Following Rosser then (2006: 8), there is a crucial need for scholars to refocus their
attention away from questions of why natural resource wealth has fostered “various political
pathologies and in turn promoted poor developmental performance”, and towards questions of
what political and social factors enable some (rather than all) resource-rich countries to
utilize their resources to achieve sound development. More specifically, Rosser (2006) calls
for 1) increased attention towards the specific political and social factors that shape
developmental outcomes, e.g. societies social contexts, and 2) the ways in which relationships
rooted in class, ethnic and/or religious cleavages hampers equal distribution of countries
revenues from natural resource extraction, e.g. societies structural characteristics.
In order to fully comprehend the complex political, socio-economic relationship of
resource governance in Bolivia, I find Rosser’s critique of the current resource curse literature
particularly interesting. In my discussion of the challenges that arise between the Bolivian
38 state and its indigenous population in relation to natural resource extraction, I draw upon
Rosser’s views, in addition to the theories already presented here.
39 Section II: Empirical exploration and discussion
1.0 Exploring the challenges associated with the inclusion of indigenous peoples in
natural resource governance
Whilst it was previously assumed that natural-resource wealth functioned as a mean to boost
economic growth and development, more recently however, a sizeable literature has emerged
that points in the complete opposite direction: natural-resource wealth increases rather than
decreases the likelihood for countries to experience negative economic, political and social
outcomes, including civil and ethnic war, low levels of democracy and poor economic
performance (McNeish 2010: 2). Since the late 1980s onwards – and backed by numerous
empirical findings on the issue in question – theories such as the resource curse and the
paradox of plenty have thus been applied almost exclusively to countries of the Global South,
including Bolivia (McNeish 2010: 2).
Meanwhile, efforts are also being made to broaden our understanding of the
relationship between economic performance and natural resource abundance. Scholars have
increasingly begun to refocus their attention towards the structural characteristics and sociohistorical contexts of resource-rich countries in the Global South, thus recognizing the fact
that neither imperialist power relations nor ideology discourses are perspectives of the past
(Logan & McNeish 2012: 22, Rosser 2006).
In Bolivia, opposition against the government’s reliance upon extractive industries and
non-renewable resources seem to suggest that natural resource wealth do not come about
without popular uprising. Social conflicts abound, ranging from indigenous peoples struggles
over territorial rights, self-governance and autonomy, to more general claims of greater
economic and political power. Whilst “ethnic politics” (de la Cadena 2010) has made it onto
the national political stage, neither indigenous peoples themselves nor the Morales
administration seem to be at ease with what such an indigenous discourse ought to imply and
moreover, of how to sufficiently combine ethnic politics with that of neoliberalism. Thus,
opposing views and interests both amongst and between indigenous peoples and the Bolivian
state have led to more rather than less contestations in recent times.
With reference to empirical findings derived at from my fieldwork, the following
chapters explore some of the challenges that my informants view as most central concerning
natural resource extraction.
40 1.1 Neoliberalism with a hint of indigeneity?
What is happening with Evo [Morales] is that he has an Indian face but a neoliberal mindset. We have
been dreaming of, not yet a colonial state but of a plurinational one, in which our communities’
visions are respected. But today, our visions are not respected, and this is why we continue to fight
(Rafael Arcángel Quispe Flores, La Paz, 05.11.13)
According to several of my informants and exemplified by the quote above, Morales and his
administration struggle to combine an indigenous discourse with that of a neoliberal one.
However, to properly define what an indigenous discourse implies, is not a straightforward
mission – neither for my informants nor for scholars.
According to Crabtree (2008), there is simply “no clear agreed statement” (10) as to
what an indigenous or ethnic discourse actually consists of and thus, he simply argues that, in
overall terms, it refers to “ […] a desire to right the wrongs of centuries and to break down
areas of exclusion”. Moreover, numerous terms exist – such as multiculturalism, cultural
pluralism and interculturality – which all seek to encompass, in one way or another, greater
recognition and respect of formerly marginalized groups, and a renewed interest in assuring
individual and collective rights of such groups (Postero 2007: 13-14).
Thus, the mobilizing of social movements since the 1980s onward, in which ethnic
and cultural claims as well as historical claims to territory, self-governance and autonomy
gained ground – coupled with a state that gradually became more and more influenced by the
international human rights agenda and further, adopted several pro-indigenous declarations –
now comprise the basis of Bolivia’s so-called indigenous discourse. In addition, ethnic
politics has been further embraced since Evo Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo
(MAS, Movement towards Socialism) took power in 2005. This is seen most clearly in the
text of the country’s new constitution in which respect and protection for Mother Earth and
the environment is explicitly highlighted. Taken together, the revaluation of indigenous
peoples culture, customs and worldviews within public as well as private spheres seem to
suggest that contemporary Bolivia has adopted precisely that of an indigenous discourse.
It is not an overstatement to argue that this pro-indigenous agenda has derived from
contestations over that of indigeneity itself. However, and as highlighted in my theory
chapter: the concept of indigeneity and the frameworks that give meaning to “Indianness”
(Postero 2007: 11) is constantly changing – according to historical, economic, social and
political circumstances, and across time and space. As Postero (2007: 11) argues, “ […]
41 indigenousness – like any identity – is not an uncontested category of domination, but a
contingent category negotiated by individual and collective subjects”, as exemplified by
several of my informants.
Rafael Arcángel Quispe Flores is the leader and coordinator of CONAMAQ (National
Council for Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu), Bolivia’s main highland indigenous federation,
which was founded in 1997 (Fabricant 2013: 164). He is Aymara and thus, belongs to one of
Bolivia’s largest ethnic groups, which is mostly to be found in the western Andean region of
the country (Albó 2008: 10). When I met him at CONAMAQs headquarters, located in the
area of Sopocachi in La Paz, he was dressed in a traditional, colorful woven shawl and an
Aymara Fedora Hat, both of which he wore with great pride (Field notes, La Paz, 05.11.13).
When he argues that Evo Morales has ‘an Indian face but a neoliberal mindset’, Rafael
points to the fact that the president – arguably, unlike himself – pursues two discourses
simultaneously: by face, Morales’ is indigenous and thus pursues the indigenous discourse
referred to above, but in his mind, he pursues that of neoliberalism. During my conversation
with Rafael, he also argued that ‘the president has another vision’, which ought to imply that
Morales’ pursues something ‘other than’ that what might be termed ‘pachamamismo’, and
that the Morales’ administration simply does not comply with the rights of indigenous peoples
as enshrined within the new constitution. Are these discourses simply impossible to combine?
It seems perfectly clear from Rafael’s quotes at least, that certain elements of
‘pachamamismo’ stand in direct opposition to Bolivia’s current neoliberal discourse. He
further elaborated on this by stating that:
Politically speaking, it [the governments’ discourse] is neoliberal. A government that is indigenous in
discourse implies that it is anti-capitalistic and anti-neoliberal, but our policies are oriented in the
complete opposite direction. The structure of the state, you can see that it remains colonial: the
developmental plans remain colonial and the justice system remains mono-cultural. Although one
recognizes a plural justice –and economic system, we have been able to implement absolutely
nothing. We see that our president [Evo Morales] has established and is consolidating a colonial
Republican state, and in name – nothing else – is it plurinational (Rafael Arcángel Quispe Flores, La
Paz, 05.11.13).
As stated elsewhere in this thesis and as elaborated on by Rafael, neoliberalism – the
form of state government that has gained dominance since the mid-1980s onwards – is the
prevailing discourse in present-day Bolivia (Postero 2007: 15). Apart from being a philosophy
42 in which individuals are privileged and the market is guided by the ‘invisible hand’, it is also
a set of political and economic ideologies which aim at minimizing the state apparatus and
privileging market forces through the liberalization of trade, creation of private enterprises
and provision of social services (Hindery 2013: 4), Postero 2005: 77, 2007: 13-14).
Arguably, Bolivia finds itself somewhere ‘in between’ full-scale neoliberalism and
that of socialism: it has reduced certain state-functions and trimmed down social spending,
whilst simultaneously maintaining a somewhat repressive and centralized state apparatus
(Postero 2005: 77). Thus, Bolivia is associated with what Vise President Àlvaro García Linera
has termed “Andean-Amazonian” capitalism: the state depends upon revenues from gas, oil,
minerals and other natural resources to achieve domestic development and economic growth
and thus continues to rely upon the core features of a capitalist market, whilst also having left
behind certain tenets of neoliberalism (Hindery 2013: 4) – as exemplified by the process of
nationalization of the hydrocarbon production chain since the 2000s onwards.
With reference to my interview with Rafael, it might be argued that it is precisely this
‘middle-ground’ position that continues to create tension between indigenous peoples and the
Bolivian state. As Hindery (2013: 4) writes, the Morales administration “ […] privileges a
Western view of modernization and industrialization over Indigenous cosmologies of respect
for Mother Earth and living well (Vivir Bien)”, thus maintaining a state structure similar to
that of Bolivia’s colonial and liberal era. Possibly, this is what upsets Rafael and makes him
argue that in name only, is Bolivia plurinational.
Since the early 1980s, CONAMAQ – amongst others – has represented an alternative
political discourse to that of neoliberalism and “Andean-Amazonian-capitalism”. Known as
the “ayllu”, a Pre-Columbian land-holding system based upon kin relations and collective
work patterns, CONAMAQ works to reconstitute an egalitarian, traditional ayllu and marka
(communal unit of several ayllus) structure in Western Bolivia (Fabricant 2013: 163-166).
Thus, their political work revolves around claims of autonomy and self-sufficiency to kinbased and collectively owned territories. Also, since the mid-2000s, CONAMAQ has
established itself as an important actor within the climate justice area and today, it is a key
member of the Bolivian Platform for Climate Change (Fabricant 2013: 164). As Fabricant
(2013: 164) notes, CONAMAQ has mobilized the ayllu and marka structure “…as an
alternative to expansive and destructive capitalism”. According to Fabricant (2013: 164),
CONAMAQ’s members are critical of Bolivia’s dependency upon extractive industries and
non-renewable resources, as it harms both the environment and contributes to climate change.
In overall terms, CONAMAQ is thus known to support the indigenous discourse referred to
43 above. Respect for Mother Earth (pachamama) and the concept of “living well” (Vivir Bien)
have become particularly important. As Fabricant (2013: 164) notes, to live in harmony with
others as well as with the larger, natural environment, are prominent features of this
“idealized Andean cosmovision”.
According to Rafael, Morales’ pursues anything but an indigenous discourse, which,
in his opinion, ought to be both ‘anti-capitalistic and anti-neoliberal’ in character. Thus, to
Rafael, to combine an indigenous discourse with that of capitalism is impossible. To some
extent at least, his response resembles that of early anthropological representations of native
peoples and their communities: perceived of as timeless and grounded in rural realities, this
body of literature often reflected natives and their systems of “ayllu” democracy as untouched
by both colonialism and capitalism, as explicitly highlighted by Fabricant (2013: 167).
However, whilst it is certainly true that Bolivia’s nation-building process has undermined – or
rather, worked against – the ayllu and marka structure of democracy, indigenous peoples have
nonetheless gradually adopted to changing historical, economic, social and political
circumstances. This is evident if one looks back at Bolivia’s political history.
During the colonial era, the role played by the caciques (indigenous authorities)
provided a neat linkage between on the one hand, ‘the republic of indios’ (Indians) and the
white minority; during the corporatist era, some indigenous groups made use of the uneven
reach of the state and thus, gained access to social services and politico-economic benefits,
and lastly; during the neoliberal era, the introduction of neoliberal reforms – and arguably,
their preceding failures – provided political leverage for the indigenous discourse to blossom
even further and gain foothold in national politics. Obviously, as this short glance back at
Bolivia’s political history suggests, the concept of indigeneity is not static, and neither are the
peoples that define themselves according to it. Thus, possibly, when Rafael argues that the
current discourse is neoliberal with ‘policies oriented in the complete opposite direction’ to
that of indigeneity – of ‘pachamamismo’ – he simply fails to acknowledge the ways in which
indigenous peoples have also contributed to and benefitted from the development of
capitalism – albeit, unevenly so.
This resembles a point made by Postero (2007: 15), namely that neoliberalism “acts to
define citizen participation” according to certain logics. Derived from classical liberalism and
the doctrines of philosophers such as Locke and Mill, Postero (2007: 16) argues that once a
state offers fewer public services and funding to its population, neoliberalism thus urges
citizens to take greater responsibility for their own welfare. Accordingly, the ultimate result
becomes the creation of “neoliberal subjects” – individuals that are gradually integrated into
44 the market (Postero 2007: 16). Keeping in mind that the concept of indigeneity is hardly
static, it should come as no surprise that ethnic identities are “adjusted” according to changing
circumstances, and across time and space – both consciously and unconsciously. The
framework that gives meaning to Indianness is constantly changing, whereby some gain,
while others loose. In a constant search for what indigeneity and pachamamismo ought to
imply, it thus seems reasonable that Rafael blames capitalism rather than acknowledging that
he is amongst those “neoliberal subjects” whose identity is affected by neoliberalism.
A somewhat more nuanced response is found in my conversation with Juan Pablo
Flores. He works for Centro de Estudios y Apollo al Desarollo Local (CEADL, Center for
Studies and Support to Local Development), a small NGO based in La Paz, but with offices
also in El Alto, Santa Cruz and Sucre (Field notes, October 2013). Discussing
pachamamismo, social movements and the Morales administrations’ extractivist development
model, he stated the following:
In my opinion, Bolivians – and you too for that matter – must be careful of looking at indigenous
communities as a unit that exists outside of the capitalist system; as if their somehow outside of the
development of this country; as if their outside of their own conditions and as if they do not have
relations with other indigenous communities. I think you need to look into their specific features,
because they have serious problems too, you know (Juan Pablo Flores, La Paz, 16.10.13).
To some extent at least, Juan Pablo seem to be more inclined to acknowledge that
indigenous peoples are somehow affected by neoliberalism – for better or for worse – and that
they thus have become “neoliberal subjects”, as argued by Postero (2007: 16). Possibly, what
Juan Pablo suggests, is that Western scientists, and as he argues, also Bolivians, all too often
define indigenous peoples and their communities in terms of stereotyped images which
describe them as somehow unaffected by the societies to which they are a part. This is an
issue I will return to below.
Here it suffices to observe that within and amongst indigenous peoples there exist
different, and sometimes also contradictory views of what indigeneity and capitalism implies
for those affected by such concepts. To Rafael, capitalism is certainly viewed as the most
devastating factor of the Morales’ extractivist development model, and thus, it makes sense
for him to argue that his ‘communities visions are not respected’ under the current model. To
Juan Pablo on the other hand, it is possible to trace a more nuanced view: rather than simply
concluding that capitalism alone is the root cause to problems between indigenous peoples
45 and the Bolivian state, he argues that the specific features and characteristics of indigenous
communities need to be further explored before coming to conclusions.
Postero (2007: 15-18) argues that the integration of “neoliberal subjects” into the
market is precisely what happened in Bolivia during the 1990s. In this period, the state
introduced various political reforms under the Plan de Todos (the Plan for Everyone) and thus
reorganized the entire principles of responsibility by encouraging peoples to participate in
developmental projects at the local and regional level. Moreover, rather than “fighting the
national government over large issues of resource allocation” (Postero 2007: 16), Bolivia’s
decentralization process resulted in a strengthening of civil society organizations through
measures of inclusion, as well as through a reintegration of indigenous peoples cultural claims
and rights. However, and as noted elsewhere in this thesis, by operating according to patronclientelist relations similar to those established during the colonial and liberal era, certain civil
society organizations and indigenous groups were favored at the expense of others, thus
causing a situation of further discontent amongst the indigenous population at large. Possibly,
the continuation of such elitist and patron-clientelist relations’ in present-day Bolivia (Bull
2013: 93) is what further upsets CONAMAQ’s leader, Rafael. As the next part reveals, his
organization – amongst others – has, arguably, gained the least, both economically and
politically speaking, by the current administration in office. As such, it should come as no
surprise that he is rather critical of Morales’ and his extractivist development model, claiming
that the structure of the state is still colonial in character.
1.2 Clientelism and the uneven access to economic and political power
To a large extent, elitist and patron-clientelist relations’ prevails in contemporary Bolivia
(Bull 2013: 93). According to several of my informants, they have all gained from the ways in
which the Morales administration pursues on the one hand, an indigenous agenda, whilst on
the other, also sticks to – and depends upon – an extractivist development model for its
survival. Amongst others, Luis Felipe Villarroel explained this to me when I attended a
workshop hosted by the Norwegian People’s Aid in Santa Cruz. A man in his early 40s, he is
currently the leader of Movimiento sin Tierra (Movement of People Without Land) in Santa
Cruz – the region’s landless Peasant Movement. During the hour I sat down with him to
discuss Bolivia’s extractivist development model and its effects upon the indigenous
population, he stated the following:
46 Los campesinos (peasants) function as the articulators of the government’s policies – they are the
government’s arms. The government says something, and they do it. Whenever the government
approves something [new], who raise their hands? The peasants do – along with a small part of [other]
indigenous groups that support the government because of economic and political benefits. If you’re
not with the government, what are you then to receive? Nothing. As I see it, peasants eat from two
sides: they eat from the government and they eat from the right wing [politically speaking]. From the
government, they [peasants] eat from projects funded by the Indigenous Fund; from the right, they
[peasants] eat from projects supported by the Governor (Luis Felipe Villarroel, Santa Cruz, 08.11.13).
According to Luis, there are several factors at play here. Obviously, corruption and
elitism is maintained vis-à-vis the government and certain indigenous groups, and as Luis
highlighted: mainly los campesinos (the peasants) gain from the government currently in
office.
This, I hold, is rooted in Bolivia’s political history, in which the concept of indigeneity
was constructed according to particular state-society relations. Historically speaking, the term
campesino was first adopted after the 1952 Revolution (Molina 2008: 114). As part of the
Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario’s (MNR, National Revolutionary Movement)
project to assimilate indigenous peoples into the national economy, Indians were renamed
campesinos (peasants or farmers) and peasant unions were organized under the umbrella-term
sindicatos campesinos (peasant unions) (Postero 2007: 10). Whilst the MNR’s initial aim was
to achieve cultural homogeneity throughout Bolivia as a whole (Molina 2008: 114), in the
process, it was primarily the indigenous groups located in the highlands that adopted the term
campesino (Postero 2007: 10). Consequently, highland peoples were also those with the
closest ties to the state apparatus and thus to its resources – politically as well as economically
speaking – a pattern that, arguably, exists until present, and which has been further
strengthened under the Morales administration and the MAS party.
This is firmly documented by sociologist Schilling-Vacaflor (2011) in her article about
Bolivia’s new constitution. As previously highlighted, throughout the 1990s, indigenouscampesinos (Schilling-Vacaflor 2011: 6) became the driving forces in challenging the existing
social order and demanding profound state-structural transformation. Several enhancements
were made, such as the recognition of Bolivia as a “multicultural and pluri-ethnic” state,
along with numerous decentralization policies and political reforms. Amongst the most
important once were the Law of Popular Participation (1995) and the Law of Political Parties
(1999) (Schilling-Vacaflor 2011: 7). The latter enabled civil society organizations and
47 indigenous peoples organizations to nominate candidates from their own parties, thus
strengthening the decision-making role of civil society in general and indigenous political
parties in particular. Founded already in 1995 by an alliance of several unionized peasant
organizations, in which the cocaleros (coca-growers) of the Chapare region in Cochabamba
played the most active part, the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) quickly became
Bolivia’s largest indigenous party (Bull 2007: 75-76). Thus, it is not an overstatement to
argue that a heterogeneous indigenous-campesino discourse was about to emerge in Bolivia
(Schilling-Vacaflor (2011: 7).
This is further evident studying the MAS’ first period in office (2006-2010), in which
it profoundly sealed its hegemonic power within the Constituent Assembly – the very same
chamber that in 2009 approved and adopted Bolivia’s new constitution. Initially, once
Morales entered presidency in 2005, a general agreement was made between the MAS and
indigenous organizations that the latter would be granted 16 reserved seats in the Assembly.
Morales and the MAS nonetheless broke this promise as they assumed 137 out of 255
assembly seats – making it close to impossible for indigenous groups to elect candidates
without simultaneously allying with the MAS. As Schilling-Vacaflor (2011: 8) argues, the
MAS broke the pact primarily to concentrate votes in its own favor, thus altering any process
of achieving a substantive and transformative democracy.
In retrospect, although the new constitution was adopted by referendum (Flesken
2013: 343), the constitution-writing process became undemocratic and biased in favor of the
MAS administration and its founding organizations. Whilst the legal documents that comprise
today’s constitution was prepared by an assembly of representatives from the major
indigenous organizations – known as the ‘Unity Pact’ – and then used as the basis for the
MAS party’s proposals, a widespread critique has been that various political parties and
indigenous groups tried to achieve their own goals by means of influencing and controlling
the Constituent Assembly (Schilling-Vacaflor 2011: 9).
It is fair to argue that such a strategy largely succeeded, as Congress delegates
changed approximately a 100 of the assembly’s original articles (Schilling-Vacaflor 2011: 9).
In the end, lowland organizations in particular, but also Ayllu organizations such as
CONAMAQ – to which my informant, Rafael, represents – lost the most in this corrupt
scheme: they had both fewer representatives within the Constituent Assembly as well as
looser ties to the MAS (Bull 2013: 93, Schilling-Vacaflor 2011: 9). Ultimately then, the MAS
did little to ensure that a participative, representative and communitarian democracy was
strengthened during both the constitution-writing process and the preceding implementation
48 process of the new constitution, thus compromising the underlying aims of Article 11 – which
explicitly highlights these as specific goals (Schilling-Vacaflor 2011: 9).
Under the Morales administration it is clearly evident that corruption and patronclientelist relations are not features of the past, as highlighted by both of my informants thus
far. Rather, these features still flourish – a case in point that obviously hampers any attempts
of maintaining and strengthening the MAS’ self-proclaimed indigenous discourse. Also, it
hampers attempts of building an extensive and substantive democracy. As Schilling-Vacaflor
argues (2011: 4): whilst a democracy is commonly assumed to ensure transparency,
accountability and broaden the basis for civil society participation, it might also produce
antidemocratic societal tendencies through those very same participatory processes. The MAS
is a poignant example of this, and it might be argued that it has succeeded in ‘manipulating’
its citizenry with a one-sided political indigenous-identity discourse and thus, has excluded
rather than included both non-indigenous Bolivians and various indigenous organizations in
the process – as my informant, Luis Villarroel, argued above (Schilling-Vacaflor 2011: 4).
1.3 Bolivia anno 2014: Who is indigenous?
Although indigenous peoples initially pushed for a political shift towards that of
pachamamismo, I doubt they envisioned a situation in which the MAS – under the leadership
of Evo Morales himself – would centralize its power by following a top-down approach
commonly associated with that of his predecessors. Thus, it might be argued that the
revaluation of ethnicity into national politics has led to more rather than less contestation over
the concept of indigeneity and over what an indigenous discourse in reality ought to imply.
This is particularly evident with reference to the new constitution, in which the
articulations of indigenous identities are particularly highlighted (Flesken 2013: 344). Article
30 for instance, which is relatively widespread throughout Bolivia, defines a nation or peoples
being indígena originario campesino (IOC, indigenous original peasant) as “ […] any human
collective that shares a cultural identity, language, historical tradition, institutions,
territoriality and cosmovision, whose existence is prior to the Spanish colonial invasion”
(Flesken 2013: 343). Whilst this article properly defines the indigenous population as both
nations and peoples, more recently however, it has also sharpened polarization within the
Bolivian population: on the one hand, it establishes a division between an indigenous and a
non-indigenous Bolivia, on the other, it increases divisions amongst the indigenous
49 population itself because of the heterogeneous characteristics given to the concept of
indigeneity (Flesken 2013: 344).
Polarization as such, is also reflected within the scholarly literature on indigeneity,
which, more often than not, has come to define native peoples according to stereotyped
images of ‘the noble savage’ or the ‘eco-Indian’. Particularly, works by social scientists in the
1970s and 1980s commonly portrayed indigenous peoples according to ideas of ‘lo Andino’
(Andeanism), in which their closeness to ecologies and natural environments were highlighted
as prominent features (Fabricant 2013: 167). In the more recent debate about the issue of
indigeneity – what is sometimes termed “the indigenous peoples debate” (Canessa 2007) –
scholarly are frequently quoted referring to native peoples as ‘hunter-gatherers’ and ‘nomads’,
or even as peoples ‘living in the stone age’, again, as if they are somehow untouched by
societal changes (Canessa 2007: 196-197).
In the era of globalization however, tides are definitely changing and thus, indigenous
peoples no longer fit into such reductionist and romantic ideals of indigeneity. The concept
itself means different things to different peoples – across time as well as across place – and is
thus, not a heterogeneous one. As Canessa (2007) states:
Although it may appear ‘relatively easy’ to say who is indigenous in Latin America, as is sometimes
suggested, who is and who isn’t indigenous and what it means to be indigenous in Latin America is
highly variable, context specific and changes over time…Whatever indigeneity is about in Bolivia, it
is not about a hunter-gatherer Urkultur (197).
According to Albó (2008: 30), the formation of identities – and moreover, of
indigenismo – comes with “dialectical tensions that tend to repeat themselves through
history”. Following Albó (2008), one such tension is found between ethnic identities and a
unified national identity, which in his opinion is “…the oldest and most enduring conditioning
factor affecting both politics and social formation in Bolivia…” (30). Viewed historically,
Albó (2008) argues that during both the colonial period and the preceding neoliberal era
ethnic identities emerge through patterns of ‘generic polarization’: in one end of the specter
where white Spaniards and criollos; in the other were indios (Indians) and indigenous groups.
However, both eras failed to erase these polarization tendencies, and so they remained in the
subsequent period of nation building and cultural mestizaje following the 1952 Revolution
(Albó 2008: 30). Tensions between ethnic identities and a common national identity have thus
become socially embedded in Bolivia, and as witnessed by the reemergence of ethnic politics
50 from the 1960s onwards: thus far, no political agenda has successfully replaced these
tensions.
What is more, it might be argued that this tension is further strengthen under the new
constitution, as witnessed with reference to indigenous peoples’ search for greater
complementarity between individual citizen rights on the one hand, and collective rights on
the other. Whilst the former strengthens national unity on the basis of peoples’ equal status as
citizens of the nation-state, the latter might indeed be argued to do the opposite. Within the
new constitution, indigenous peoples have rights as first-class citizens – thus, individual rights
– whilst simultaneously having specific rights, rooted in ties to indigenous communities The
latter also grants them collective rights. As such, indigenous peoples have a double demand to
which the new constitution fulfills: they have gained equality while also won their right to be
differently respected on the basis of cultural identities and diversity (Albó 2008: 31).
Thus, more recently, and particularly with reference to the new constitution in which
collective rights for indigenous groups loom large, critical voices amongst ‘regular Bolivians’
as well as indigenous groups have emerged. Following Flesken (2013: 345), criticism of
Andean centrism is increasing against both the new constitution and the Morales’
administrations’ policies, which are deemed to prioritize rural and collective forms of
indigeneity at the expense of urban and individual forms. As such, yet another of Albó’s
(2008: 32) tensions becomes evident: the rural-versus-urban one.
Historically speaking, poverty and indigenousness has commonly been concentrated in
the rural areas, both geographically and culturally – a pattern that is evident also in presentday Bolivia. However, during the colonial and neocolonial period, and particularly during the
liberal era, this led to the rather unscientific conclusion that the rural sector was the poorest
one because of the influence by ancient cultures – in stark contrast to the cities whereby nonindigenous culture and customs had gained hegemony (Albó 2008: 32). Consequently, a
process of cultural mestizaje (cultural mixing) emerged, in which indigenous peoples were
forced to abandon their own culture and replace it by the dominant Hispanic-criollo one.
More recently, and due to migration from the countryside to the cities, to the
advancing agricultural frontiers and from Bolivia to other countries alike, the majority of
those defining themselves as belonging to indigenous groups now live in urban areas, and as
Albó (2008: 33) notes – in the poorest peripheries. Thus, it no longer makes sense to define
indigeneity in terms of a rural-versus-urban contradiction: if anything, the pendulum has
shifted towards a rural/impoverished/ethnically urban periphery versus a wealthier/more
central and urban one, as argued by Albó (2008: 33).
51 I experienced this myself when travelling back and forth between downtown La Paz
and its satellite city, El Alto. The latter is located at an altitude of 4000 m above sea level, and
thus, might rightfully be termed “an indigenous urban center overlooking a colonial city”
(Arbona & Kohl 2004: 255). Whereas La Paz represents a mestizo (hybrid) urban metropolis
whereby peoples of both indigenous and non-indigenous heritage live side by side, in the
2001 census, 74 percent of El Alto’s population identified themselves as Aymara (Albó 2008:
33). Thus, poor, urban Aymara Indians make up the majority of the population in the satellite
city – in sharp contrast to La Paz’s southern zone (la zona sur), in which a middle- and upper
class have blossomed over the last twenty years (Arbona & Kohl 2004: 260, Postero 2007: 2).
The socio-economic differences between the two cities are evident once getting off at
the ‘Ceja’, literally ‘the eyebrow’ in El Alto, which is surrounded by brick buildings in
varying degrees of completion, and mostly unpaved sidewalks (Field notes, November 2013).
Moreover, El Alto is located on an almost treeless plateau commonly termed el altiplano (the
high plateau) and due to its altitude, it is known for its rough climate. Thus, women are
dressed in traditional Indian wool-shawls, and more often than not, I saw peoples wearing
several layers of clothes on top of each other (Field notes, November 2013). Also, it is
estimated that fifty-four percent of El Alto’s residents relies on outdoor plumbing for access
to water, and thirty-seven percent of its households are without access to toilets or latrines,
compared to only 16 percent in La Paz (Arbona & Kohl 2004: 261). Thus, El Alto represents
a rather opposite social universe to that of urban metropolis’ elsewhere in the world:
geographically speaking, the poorest parts of the population is located ‘on the top’ rather than
‘at the bottom’.
During my stay in Bolivia, I was invited home to one of the housekeepers working at
La Misión Alianza’s (the Mission Alliance) guesthouse. A woman in her mid-30s, Berta lives
in a brick house in El Alto together with her husband and their three children. To my surprise,
Berta welcomed me fully dressed as a cholita (an Aymara woman), which is never the case
when she is at work. Wearing a traditional – and I would suppose, heavy – blue-colored skirt,
firmly placed around her waist to give a ‘round’ backside, a black wool-shawl and the typical
Bolivian bowler-hat on top, she proudly showed me around in her house. We spent most of
the afternoon looking through her wardrobe, in which all of her Aymara-dresses were neatly
organized in a long row. This further strengthened my perception of her as proud of being
Aymara-Indian.
However, only if peoples ask her if she is Aymara, will she tell them so. Otherwise,
she simply identifies herself as Bolivian. Also, I never saw her dress up like a cholita
52 (Aymara woman) except from when she was at home or walking around in El Alto.
Moreover, although both Berta and her husband know their native language by heart, they
never speak Aymara with their children or amongst themselves. The entire family simply
communicates with each other in Spanish, rather than giving both languages equal footing
within the household (Field notes, November 2013. This reflects the 2001 census, which
recorded that – for the first time in Bolivia’s history – the majority of Bolivians had Spanish
as their mother tongue (Canessa 2007: 199). However, and as argued by Canessa (2007: 199200), such records runs somewhat counter to the history of a country whereby pachamamismo
and ethnic politics are its most important political weapons against patterns of discrimination.
This exemplifies the ways in which indigeneity is a context-specific concept to which
different ‘identities’ are stressed depending upon circumstance: in Berta’s case, she aims at
being Aymara-Indian only while surrounded by others who define themselves accordingly. At
the guesthouse however, she simply prefers to identify as non-indigenous. Possibly, outside of
El Alto, Berta feels less discriminated against and looked down upon by stressing her identity
as Bolivian rather than that of Aymara. Thus, being indigenous or Indian in 2014 is not a
straightforward issue. It is for this reason Albó (2008: 14) argues that, in Bolivia, people can
just as easily define themselves as Aymara or Quechua and at the same time as mestizo (of
mixed heritage). In my opinion, this is clearly exemplifies in the ways in which Berta stresses
different identities depending upon circumstance.
In this chapter I have argued that contemporary contestations over ethnic politics are
rooted in indigenous peoples different understandings of the meaning of indigeneity itself,
and moreover, of their opposing views concerning the Morales administrations continuous
dependency upon natural resource extraction. On the one hand, indigenous peoples resist the
combination of pachamamismo and neoliberalism, claiming that the latter capitalizes the
political and socioeconomic system and thus, conflicts with the promises of respect and
protection for Mother Earth and the environment. On the other hand, indigenous peoples fail
to acknowledge that they have both contributed to and benefitted from the capitalization of
the economy – a pattern that also persists under the Morales administration. However,
Bolivia’s history has left its mark on the society to the extent that patron-clintelist relations
still determine which indigenous organizations and ethnic groups gain the most from the
government currently in office. Thus, the indigenous discourse currently in place is
challenged by the very same mechanisms that provoked tensions between the state and its
citizenry in pre-historical epochs, namely that of exclusion rather than inclusion.
53 2.0 Challenges of natural resource extraction in contemporary Bolivia
In the late 20th century, a political shift has occurred throughout all of Latin America. In
nearly every country – and supported by more or less unified social movements –
authoritarian regimes have been replaced by that of left-of-centre governments, what Bull
terms ‘Pink-Tide’ governments (Bull 2013). In Brazil, this was marked by the presidential
elections of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2002; in Bolivia, the entering of Aymara Indian and
coca-grower unionist Evo Morales in 2005 similarly reflects the changes about to occur in the
region (Bull 2013: 75).
Following this shift, Bolivia has attempted to break free from its neoliberal market-led
development trajectory by pursuing instead the “Andean-Amazonian” economic model
explained elsewhere in this thesis. Key in this process has been a restructuring of Bolivia’s
hydrocarbon sector, with the ultimate aim being that of full-scale nationalization of the
country’s oil and gas reserves (Hindery 2013: 150-151). Thus, shortly after Morales took
power, Bolivia’s state oil company – YPFB – regained control of the hydrocarbon production
chain, followed by the implementation of both the ‘nationalization decree’ (‘Heroes of the
Chaco, no. 28701) and the so-called Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons (IDH) – a tax regime that is
to redistribute the revenues from natural resources towards different social programs (Hindery
2013: 151, Wanderley et al. 2012: 193-194). Recently, the government has also expanded its
extractive frontiers by escalating its production in natural gas, amongst other minerals.
Following Schilling-Vacaflor (2013: 207), between 2001 and 2009, estimates suggest that the
production of gas alone was doubled. What is more, 43,3 percent of Bolivia’s exports in 2010
stemmed from the exportation of mineral fuel3.
Thus, due to continued expansion and dependency upon natural resource extraction,
social conflicts persist in Bolivia. As Bull (2013: 76) argues, these conflicts revolve around
both the distribution of greater political and economic power as well as protection from the
penetration of capitalism on indigenous territories, which are protected by international and
domestic laws alike. In Bolivia, it is reasonable to argue that the ‘resource curse’ continuous
to be an urgent puzzle. Whilst the former depends upon extractive industries and nonrenewable resources to finance social policies (Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 207), naturalresource wealth does not come about without simultaneously producing tensions. Based upon
interviews conducted in Bolivia, this chapter explores current challenges and contradictions
3 Norad Report 7/2012, Enhancing the integrity of the Oil for Development Programme: Assessing
vulnerabilities to corruption and identifying prevention measures – case studies of Bolivia,
Mozambique and Uganda.
54 faced by indigenous peoples and leaders of various NGOs concerned by the continued rise in
natural resource extraction.
2.1 Nationalization of natural resources: solely an illusion?
When I asked my informants to describe Bolivia’s nationalization process, nearly all of them
simply stated that it is an ongoing process yet to be completed, since – as they argued –
transnational companies are still present (Interviews, La Paz, 05.011.13 and 06.11.13).
This was also the response I got when conducting an interview with María Lohman,
the coordinator and spokes person of Somos Sur – an NGO founded in Cochabamba in 2005,
which aims at expanding alternative views of socio-economic development through
publications, courses and radio activities4. María is originally from the United States, but has
lived most of her adult life in Bolivia, and over the past twenty years – in the Cochabamba
Department. As such, she is my only informant whose nationality is not Bolivian. Even
though she obviously speaks English fluently, she nonetheless preferred to conduct the
interview in Spanish. According to her, it was simply ‘mejor como así’ (better that way/better
like this), and moreover, she did not want her Bolivian friends – whom were waiting in the
back yard of her house – to assume that I was a journalist from abroad (Interview,
Cochabamba, 22.10.13). Thus, discussing Bolivia’s shift from neoliberalism towards that of
“Andean-Amazonian capitalism” and its effects upon the indigenous population, María stated
the following:
Today, our natural resources are managed in a neoliberal way – with only a hint of indigeneity. As
such, it is not neoliberal as it used to be, which implied that the state did not intervene at all. But, it is
nonetheless neoliberal; natural resources are commercialized with the aim of getting it abroad.
Indigenous peoples are in power, theoretically speaking, but we follow an extractivist development
model…Look at the mining sector: 85 percent of it is in the hands of 2 or 3 transnational companies!
And Bolivia is still tremendously poor, except for a small middle class who benefit from the
commercialization of drugs. Therefore I ask you: where is the industrialization? Where is the
nationalization that Morales talks about? We need to handle our national resources in a sovereign
manner. However, the problem is that we don’t have the technology to do so (María Lohman,
Cochabamba, 22.10.13).
4 Somos Sur: http://somossur.net/nosotros.html - 25.05.13.
55 The Andean Amazonian model pursued by the Morales administration is anchored in
its need to secure both macroeconomic stability and economic surplus for redistribution,
mainly to finance ambitious social policies (Bebbington & Humphreys Bebbington 2011:
137-138). Over the past years, several government representatives have stated this as a
political objective. Arguing for the continuation of the extractivist model, Vice President
Alvaro García Linero recently said that: “…[t]he social-state need[s] to generate economic
surplus that are the state’s responsibility”, and further that: “ […] you need to produce on a
large scale, to implement processes of expansive industrialization that provide you with a
social surplus that can be redistributed and support other processes of campesino (peasant),
communitarian and small scale modernization” (quoted in Bebbington & Humphreys
Bebbington 2011: 137). Thus, albeit social policies are greater under the Morales
administration than was the case with previous regimes, it is nonetheless striking how its
macro policies have not particularly changed for the better (Hecht 2013: xi).
To a large extent, this is also reflected in my interview with Marcelo Osvaldo Ortega
Aramayo. He works for CARITAS Bolivia, which is amongst several of the Catholic
Church’s official organizations worldwide5. A man in his early 50s, Marcelo met with me in
his office, located in downtown La Paz. Responsible for the organization’s national programs,
he holds tremendous knowledge of Bolivia’s socio-economic and political development
processes and thus, when I asked him to describe Bolivia’s nationalization process and the
country’s future, he simply stated that:
Politicians continue on with “politics as usual”. In practice, what [the government] does, is to meet
with foreign actors and make commitments with businesses, regardless of taking into account, in
reality, the commitments that it has with its indigenous population. The government says that we’re in
a process of decolonization – of nationalization – that we’re in a process whereby we don’t recognize
the capitalist and neoliberal system. It’s the worst lie I’ve ever heard: you don’t have to be that
intelligent to see that Bolivia’s economic policies – both at micro and macro level – are imperialist,
exploitative and neoliberal in character (Marcelo Osvaldo Ortega Aramayo, La Paz, 05.11.13).
Rather than the ‘resource curse’ being an economic phenomenon – which has
commonly been assumed by scholars and the international community alike – Karl (2007) has
suggested that, above all, the ‘curse’ is a political phenomenon. According to her, petroleum
dependent states are turned into ‘honey pots’ – a trap which roots are political in character and
5 CARITAS: http://www.caritas.org/where-we-are/latin-america/bolivia/ - 31.05.2014.
56 thus, must be contained with “political and international agreements” (257). The solution to
the ‘honey-pot’ problem is the establishment of a so-called ‘fiscal social contract’: tax
regimes whereby citizens are enabled to hold government personnel accountable for the
returns from natural resources. Failing to implement a sufficient tax system will inevitably
lead to unchecked corruption and misuse of public resources. Her more general point is that
“…state authority is historically structured through a series of exchanges of resources for
institutions” (Karl 2007: 259). Whenever such exchanges (or rather, rents) are generated
between the state and foreign companies rather than between the state and its citizenry, the
state ultimately becomes what Bebbington et al. (2008: 970) term an ‘extrovert state’: its
legitimacy is maintained vis-à-vis international interests rather than national ones.
In the Bolivian case, it is not an overstatement to argue that Karl’s ‘fiscal social
contract’ is more or less non-existent and thus, that the state’s interests are biased in favor of
transnational corporations rather than towards the interests of the population. Considering the
fact that approximately 73,5 percent of Bolivia’s 10,5 million peoples make a living from the
informal rather than the formal economy (World Bank 2013), and moreover, that a tax regime
is lacking between these informal workers and the state, it is hardly strange that the Morales
administration focuses its attention towards the interests of transnational corporations: to date,
the returns from natural resource extraction – to which transnational corporations contribute
to – is, in reality, the state’s only reliable source of income that finance its social programs
and services.
Thus, it is reasonable to assume that in the absence of a tax regime financed by taxes
imposed upon the citizenry – which, in the Bolivian case seems impossible to implement due
to the extremely high proportion of informal workers – the Morales administration will hardly
change its policies away from natural resource extraction and the interests of transnational
corporations. As highlighted by Marcelo Aramayo, politicians continue on with “politics as
usual”, which implies anything but a temporarily reliance upon natural resource extraction
(Interview, La Paz, 05.11.13). However, whilst the Bolivian economy has grown by an
average of 4,4 percent since 2008 and the returns from natural resources grew six folded
between 2004 and 2011, Bolivia nonetheless remains amongst the poorest countries in Latin
America (Norad Report 7/2012). As noted by María Lohman, ‘Bolivia is still tremendously
poor’ (Interview, Cochabamba, 22.10.13). How might this paradox be explained?
57 2.2 In a state of corruption?
In Bolivia, it is reasonable to assume that the ‘fiscal social contract’ called for by Karl (2007)
is weakened due to high levels of corruption, primarily within the public sector. Following the
report by Norad (7/2012: 6), as of 2011, Bolivia ranked amongst the bottom half of countries
in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI). In 2013, out of a total of
175 countries worldwide, the same index ranked Bolivia as country no. 1066. According to
these results – which to date are Transparency International’s latest results available – the
public sector got a score of 34 out of a 100, in which the latter is perceived of as highly clean,
or otherwise stated: without corruption (CPI 2013). Following the Norad report (7/2012: 6),
the misuse of public resources is mostly committed by the elite and by personnel working
within the state administration itself.
Although the CPI remains the most widely used corruption index and includes
measures from various organizations such as the Economist Intelligence Unit and Freedom
House, it nonetheless suffers from severe weaknesses – as is the case with most statistics
(Seligson 2006: 384). Apart from the obvious fact that such statistics usually put forth
stereotyped images that do not necessarily reflect the reality of countries, the data sources
mostly stem from the impressions of business peoples whose attention is biased in favor of
business transactions rather than towards economic activities pursued also by regular citizens
(Seligson 2006: 385). Clearly, citizens operate through other means than those depicted by
standard ‘business measures’, and thus, caution must be paid before judging the book by its
cover.
That being said, the fact that the Morales administration gains from corruption
weakens its legitimacy vis-à-vis its population and thus, makes its dependency upon natural
resource extraction an even greater nut to defend publicly. Thus, to justify the government’s
commitment to extraction, Morales frequently makes public statements whereby the
redistribution scenario is explicitly stated. For instance, he has famously argued that: “ […]
what then, is Bolivia going to live off if some NGO’s say ‘Amazonia without oil’?...They are
saying, in other words, that the Bolivian people should not have money…”, and moreover
that, “ […] necessity obligates us to exploit these natural resources, the gas, the oil, for all
Bolivians…If there’s no oil, gas, you know it is for all Bolivians and this money that we
collect from oil, from gas, has to go to all Bolivians” (quoted in Bebbington & Humphreys
Bebbington 2011: 138).
6 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2013/results/
- 04.06.14.
58 It might be argued that Morales hardly seems to care that Bolivia scores at the low
bottom of the world’s well-known corruption index and further, that his country is amongst
the poorest one in the region. However, under the Morales government, anti-corruption
measures have also been implemented – such as the passing of laws to increase transparency
in the public sector, and the establishment of a new Ministry post known as the Vice Ministry
for Institutional Transparency and the Fight against Corruption (Kohl 2010: 114). Moreover,
several peoples within the state administration have been laid off or even prosecuted on
claims of corruption, including representatives also from within Morales’ political party, the
Movement towards Socialism (the MAS) (Kohl 2010: 114-115). Yet, to break with old
patterns of the past has proven to be harder than, arguably, anticipated by the Morales
administration, causing persistently high levels of corruption. Thus, a more plausible
explanation might simply be that in times of writing, in Bolivia, no law exists that regulates
access to public information – a case in point that clearly hampers any attempts of building a
more transparent petroleum sector (Norad Report 7/2012: 32).
2.3 Weak institutional capacity: the root cause to contemporary conflicts?
Although necessity legitimates neither the government’s misuse of public resources nor its
lack of respect for Mother Earth and the environment, it might nonetheless be argued that
these are effects of weak institutional capacity rather than simply the lack of political will to
‘perform better’. This seems to be the main conclusion drawn from Norad’s report on
Bolivia’s hydrocarbon sector (7/2012). Moreover, the report stresses that the interplay of both
weak state capacity and that of technological complexity needed to make efficient use of the
hydrocarbon sector is what causes Bolivia to perform poorly, in developmental terms (2).
To some extent, this conclusion resembles that of the ‘resource curse’ literature,
particularly articles by those who argue that regime type and low levels of democracy are the
main factors explaining why resource-rich countries like Bolivia perform so poorly in terms
of developmental outcomes7. Kohl (2010) for instance, argues that Bolivia’s political history
of “inefficiency, disorganization and rent-seeking” (112) is replayed through MAS delegates
whose grass roots rather than professional constituency hamper a profound restructuring of
the state. In his view, paternalistic relationships and frequent replacements of ministers make
the government structure uneven and chaotic and thus, highly sensitive to further misuse of
7 See Rosser 2006: The Political Economy of the Resource Curse: A Literature Survey for a review of
this literature
59 public resources and funds (Kohl 2010: 112-114). Others, such as Mitra (1994) and Krause
(1995), argue that natural resource booms increases government spending simply due to the
economic opportunities envisioned by politicians in resource-rich countries (McNeish &
Logan 2012: 12). However, whilst this literature sheds light on some important vulnerabilityrisks commonly associated with resource-rich countries in the Global South, in the Bolivian
case, it might be argued that low levels of industrialization and technology are better
explained in terms of historico-structuralist perspectives.
Following the literature survey presented in Rosser (2006: 16), these perspectives
suggest that bad economic performance is due to the relative power of different social classes
or groups, and furthermore, that Latin America’s failure to reduce poverty over the past
decades is due to the region’s natural resource endowments on industrial policies. For
instance, Auty & Gelb (2000: 3) argue that rent-seeking behavior – albeit mostly found in
sub-Saharan Africa – persists in Latin America because landed elites sustained their power
even after countries gained their independence from colonialism and became somewhat more
democratic. The result has been a continuation of what he terms ‘factional states’:
governments who legitimate their power vis-à-vis their population by favoring certain ethnic
groups or classes (Auty & Gelb 2000: 3).
This point resembles that of Collier (2000), whom argues that greed and grievance
make warlords and rebel leaders enrich themselves on the economic opportunities commonly
associated with natural resource abundance and thus, distort attempts of achieving sound
developmental outcomes (McNeich & Logan 2012: 13). The ultimate result of natural
resource wealth is thus internal conflict and civil war (McNeish & Mogan 2012: 13-14). What
is largely neglected in Collier’s technocratic perspective however, is that neither political
relationships nor ideology are erased by resource politics. Auty & Gelb (2000) recognize this
to a somewhat greater extent since they – at least implicitly – draw a historical link to the
import substitution industrialization (ISI) reforms implemented throughout Latin America
from the mid-1950s onwards. Thus, they admit that the region still suffers from the outcomes
produced under these reforms.
Perhaps, Bolivia’s lack of technological know-how and capacity within its
hydrocarbon sector, coupled with a continuation of pre-historical patterns of clientelism and
corruption implies that what we currently see in Bolivia, is a replay of the ISI’s. Bolivia is
still amongst the poorest states within the Latin American region, albeit holding the fifth
largest oil reserves and the second largest gas reserves in South America (Norad Report
60 7/2012: 30). Yet, it continues to hold a periphery position in the global economy in much the
same ways as argued by Prebish and Singer back in the early 1950s.
Albeit none of my informant mentioned the ISI’s in particular, María Lohman
nonetheless wondered why – after decades of extractivism – industrialization, or rather,
modernization has thus far not come about in Bolivia. As already stated in a previous quote
by her, she simply asked me: “where is the industrialization? Where is the nationalization that
Morales talks about?” And further, that: “all we see is commercial signs of Coca Cola and a
continuation of the extractivist model” (Interview, Cochabamba, 22.10.13). Thus, it is
reasonable to assume that the resource-driven capitalist model underway in Bolivia since the
beginning of time continues to produce asymmetric access to technology and manufactured
goods (McNeish & Logan 2012: 19) – a case in point that helps explain why, as María
argued, Bolivia is still tremendously poor (Interview, Cochabamba, 22.10.13). Moreover,
whilst increased foreign direct investments (FDI) in natural resources spurs hope of greater
social and economic development, it might also deepen commodity dependency, increase
corruption and ‘tie the hands of governments’ (Haarstad 2012: 2) – as the Morales
administration is a poignant example of.
Thus, within a global political economy drive forth by a continuous dependency upon
natural resource extraction, resource sovereignty is indeed undermined. This causes social
frictions to abound. As ongoing efforts at reforms make abundantly clear: the Bolivian
political system struggles to balance on the one hand, popular support for the continuation of
its extractivist model, which is needed to finance already existing public services and
programs, and to achieve sufficient levels of investment and production for as to expand the
technological capacity of its hydrocarbon sector, on the other (Wanderley et al. 2012: 177).
Both articulations continue to create tensions and resistance amongst and between indigenous
groups as well as within the Morales administration itself. Thus, until present, neither
“Andean Amazonian capitalism” nor ethnic politics has managed to put an end to socioenvironmental conflicts.
61 3.0 The proliferation of the ‘ethnic rights agenda’
In the context of global capitalism, socio-environmental conflicts have intensified to the
extent that the idea of prior consultation and its different versions of free, prior and informed
consent now comprise an approach of its own – at the international as well as on national
levels (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010: 6). Whilst relatively new in terms of precipitating both hard
and soft laws within well-known human rights instruments, the ‘ethnic rights agenda’
(Rodrígues-Garavito 2010) as such, is hardly a new phenomenon. Rather, it reflects what anticapitalist writer Harvey (2003) terms “accumulation by dispossession”, namely indigenous
peoples’ century-old struggles against states, transnational companies, mafias and other illegal
armed groups, whom – under the brands of capitalism and development – have been enriching
themselves on the natural-resource wealth contained in the soil of indigenous territories
(Rodríguez-Garavito 2010: 5).
Worldwide, such natural-resource abundant territories comprise what RodríguezGaravito (2010: 5) terms ‘social minefields’: the dynamics of social interactions produced
within them are characterized by unequal power relations between states, indigenous
communities and transnational companies, and moreover, over struggles of how to equally
distribute both the risks and benefits associated with natural resource extraction. Thus, due to
these ‘minefields’ and the political and socio-economic conflicts they continue to produce, a
juridical and legal framework has emerged, in which the right to prior consultations and free,
prior and informed consent (FPIC) have gained centre stage in recent years.
Through processes of consultation, indigenous peoples are suppose to get ‘a say’ prior
to extractive projects, laws and/or policies carried out on indigenous territories that directly
affect them and/or their livelihood. Thus, if properly performed, such procedures might
indeed serve to strengthen indigenous peoples decision-making role in extractive policies and
natural resource governance commonly known to have negative developmental effects upon
their territories, environmentally speaking or otherwise. Moreover, for governments that still
struggle to overcome pre-historical patterns of racism, discrimination and exclusionism of
marginalized groups – to which the indigenous population is a poignant example – prior
consultations might also have the transformative effect of closing the gap between states and
its citizenry through means of greater political inclusion and thus, mitigate social conflicts.
This helps explain why some scholars – particularly those within the corporate social
responsibility approach – praise the ‘participatory rights paradigm’ currently underway.
According to this school of thought, the ‘participatory rights approach’ would most certainly
serve as an effective mechanism for ‘breaking the resource curse’ and thus, mitigate social
62 conflicts commonly known to follow from natural resource extraction in countries in the
Global South8. However, Flemming & Schilling-Vacaflor (2013: 1) derive at the exact
opposite conclusion in their GIGA-paper: according to their work, social conflicts caused by
natural resource extraction might serve as a potential force of ‘emancipatory change’
(Flemmer & Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 1).
Leaving the above positions aside for a minute, this chapter explores one question in
particular, namely: how useful are prior consultations if the players in the field have unequal
amounts of power to efficiently exercise the rights? Following Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 1213), since the end of the twentieth century onwards, neoliberal globalism has been defined in
terms of the ‘centrality of the law’ and the proliferation of ‘law and order’ to the extent that
constitutionalism, contracts, rights and legal activities characterize public as well as private
policy programs and initiatives worldwide. According to Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 12-14),
this legal dimension has also spilled over into the ‘ethnic rights agenda’ and thus, has turned
indigenous peoples into ‘legal subjects’ whose collective claims for self-determination and
territorial control is fought within the space of legal jurisdiction. Through procedures and
numerous types of participatory consultation processes, the material conditions necessary for
genuine deliberations are thus left aside and untouched. What is created instead, according to
Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 16), is a vision of a public sphere “ […] as a depoliticized space
for collaboration among generic ‘stakeholders’”.
In light of quotes and thoughts of my informants, this chapter sheds light on the above
debates and discusses the right to prior consultation and free, prior and informed consent. It is
reasonable to assume that if the legal framework current in place leaves power relations
untouched and fails to get to the core of indigenous peoples claims for cultural specific
collective rights, then the right to prior consultation and FPIC are nothing but glaze on top of
the “human rights” cake. However, it might also be the case – as Flemmer & SchillingVacaflor argue in their GIGA-paper (2013) – that, regardless of the imperfect conditions
under which FPIC are currently exercised, the ‘participatory rights approach’ might
nonetheless serve as a transformative force towards that of “emancipatory change” (Flemmer
& Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 1).
8 Flemmer & Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: ”Exploring the Consultation-Conflict Link: Lessons from
Bolivia’s and Peru’s Gas and Oil Sector” – GIGA draft that has yet to be officially published
63 3.1 The right to prior consultations and free, prior and informed consent
In contemporary Bolivia, as in other resource-reliant states, it seems appropriate to argue that
the right to prior consultations and FPIC are amongst the main measures causing continuous
tension between the indigenous population, transnational corporations and the state. As the
Morales government’s plan to construct a highway through the Isoboro Securé National Park
and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) in 2011 reveals: challenges abound on how to develop
sound policies of the right to prior consultations and FPIC as established within international
human rights instruments and the country’s new institution, and moreover, on how to comply
to these legal frameworks in practice (Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 202-203).
Following Hindery (2013: 168), legal measures of the right to prior consultations –
and more recently, of the FPIC – grew out of reforms adopted in the early 1990s. Indigenous
peoples’ mobilizing power led first to the ratification of the International Labor
Organization’s Convention 169 on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Tribal Populations
(ILO, C169) in 1992; and second, in 2007, to the approval of the United Nations Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), in which the FPIC is explicitly highlighted
(Article 32) (Hindery 2013: 168, Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 203).
At the local level, socio-environmental impacts such as the contamination of water,
dispossession from land or even the abolishment of pre-historical and cultural ways of life is
commonly known to follow from natural resource extraction (Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 205).
Thus, indigenous peoples’ right to prior consultations seek to secure on the one hand, basic
human rights such as freedom of opinion and expression and adequate standards of living and
housing9, and more cultural specific rights such as autonomy and territorial control, on the
other (Hindery 2013: 169, Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 205). According to Schilling-Vacaflor
(2013), it is thus reasonable to argue that the latter rights are particularly important to
indigenous peoples, as they make up “…the largest impoverish and marginalized group in the
region” (205). Moreover, as this thesis so vividly explores, indigenous peoples have been
systematically excluded from participation in state politics throughout the Bolivian history,
and only in recent decades have they achieved rights commonly known to follow from fullscale citizenship. Thus, the right to prior consultations aims at correcting for this injustice. As
stated in UNDRIP’s Article 32 (2):
9 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a1,
Article 18 and 25, respectively - 29.05.2014.
64 States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their
own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval
of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with
the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources10
At the international level, the UNDRIP and the ILO C169 reflect the global
indigenous rights movement and the rise of multicultural constitutionalism that has come to
define it. However, it is only within the UNDRIP that indigenous peoples’ right to FPIC is
explicitly stated, as exemplified in the above Article.
According to Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 21-22), the ILO has adopted a much weaker
version, and the final text reduces the FPIC to a ‘priority of economic development’ (22).
Following Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 20), the previous Convention 107 was revised precisely
due to stark tensions between the international indigenous rights movements and the ILO over
the objective of replacing indigenous peoples ‘integration’ with that of their ‘participation’.
Whilst the former sought to substitute participation with that of territorial control and
socioeconomic conditions in general, the latter objectified to every idea based upon granting
indigenous peoples self-determination (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010: 21). Thus, the initial
compromise proposed by the ILO Office was for governments and states to “seek the consent”
of indigenous peoples – a compromise that obviously met stark resistance by those affected.
Consequently, the weaker formulation of “consultation”, “participation” and “respect for
identity” ultimately found its way into the texts of the ILO C169 (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010:
22).
Thus, in ILO C169, the FPIC’s political function is appropriately defined as ‘a
procedural compromise between two substantively opposing positions’ (Rodríguez-Garavito
(2010: 22). If the ILO’s main agenda was to silent principle-based discussions of possible
harm to its own political grounds, it certainly did well. Moreover, it managed to incorporate
the FPIC into the neoliberal mainstream by profoundly establishing the right within ILO’s
economic framework of ‘development process’, which highlights natural resource extraction
as a capital-intensive path to increased economic growth (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010: 22).
Following Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 22-23), to maintain and reinforce their own
development-discourses, multilateral organization and private corporations alike have thus
adopted the rhetoric of the FPIC – as exemplified by the ways in which the Inter-American
10 The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf - 29.05.2014.
65 Development Bank (IADB) has incorporated concepts such as ‘participation, empowerment’
and consultation’ within its “development with identity” approach. As such, the “ethic.gov”
approach has been incorporated into the neoliberal globalization paradigm itself and
indigenous peoples’ cultural specific right to prior consultations and free, prior and informed
consent have thus become a prefix rather than adjectives on their own. Thus, it is hardly an
illusion that power relations between ‘stakeholders’ are indeed biased in favor of certain
actors (e.g. multilateral organizations and transnational corporations) rather than towards the
interests of the indigenous population at large. This chapter shows how – and to what extent –
this affect the outcomes of prior consultations.
To some extent, Bolivia’s 2009 constitution reflects similar contradictions. Although
Bolivia has ratified both the UNDRIP and the ILO C169, the new constitution nonetheless
reduces the FPIC to a mere ‘choice’ rather than a full-scale requirement (Hindery 2013: 169).
Following Hindery (2013: 169), in practical terms this means that – having consulted the
indigenous population in question – extractivism often continuous whether those affected
agree to such extraction or not (Hindery 2013: 169). This exemplifies that even those
countries that have adopted a legal human rights regime characterized by the recognition of
cultural specific rights – what might be termed the ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’ approach –
struggle to sufficiently deal with the structural patterns that, until present, has excluded
indigenous peoples from natural resource governance at large.
This helps explain why social conflicts still abound in resource-rich countries like
Bolivia. Moreover, it testifies to the fact that the right to prior consultations – and free, prior
and informed consent in particular – are exercised within a highly dynamic and complex
sociological field coexisting with other legal approaches that, to a greater or lesser extent, all
seek to deal with the “Indian Question” so vividly explained in previous chapters of this thesis
(Rodríguez-Garavito 2010). The rest of this chapter explores the main challenges and
contradictions associated with prior consultations and FPIC.
Challenges and implications of the right to free, prior and informed consent
Juan Pablo Flores – my informant who works for CEADL (Centre for Studies and Support to
Local Development) – identified two main challenges that, in his opinion, hampers any
attempts of resolving current tensions between indigenous peoples and the Bolivian state
(Interview, La Paz, 16.10.13). According to Juan Pablo, the first revolves the obvious
challenge of how to carry out consultation processes in practice and in agreement with
international and national standards. To date, several consultation processes have been
66 completed, albeit with varying degrees of success (see Schilling-Vacaflor 2013). However,
weak institutional capacity; insufficient or non-existing implementation-frameworks;
corruption and opposing views concerning natural resource extraction altogether, hampers
efficient consultation processes in practice. The second challenge relates to opposing interests
between and amongst indigenous federations as well as towards the MAS party, and
particularly concerning a much recent phenomenon known as el anteprojecto de la ley de
consulta previa (the ‘anti-project’ of the law/right to prior consultation). By drawing upon
thoughts and views of my informants, the rest of this chapter explores these conflicts in
greater dept.
In Bolivia, there are mainly three institutions that facilitate, regulate and control the
state’s hydrocarbon sector: the YPFB, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscaleros Bolivianos
(Bolivia’s national oil and gas corporation), the ANH, Agencia Nacional de Hidrocarburos
(the National Agency of Hydrocarbons), and the MHE, Ministerio de Hidrocarburos y
Energía (the Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energy) (NORAD Report 7/2012). Under the
existing Hydrocarbon Law of 2005 (no. 3028), the latter institution – the MHE – regulates
any consultation procedure in accordance to el Decreto Supremo no. 29033, or the Supreme
Decree no. 29033, which stipulates that:
The competent authority for carrying out prior consultations is the Ministry of Hydrocarbons and
Energy (MHE); the customs and traditions as well as the representative decision-making institutions of
indigenous peoples and peasant communities should be taken into account; the consultation
mechanisms are to be established jointly between the MHE and the indigenous-peasant communities
in each case; consultations must comply with the phases of coordination and information, organization
and planning, execution of the consultation and agreement-finding. The results of the consultation
shall be recorded in a signed agreement and the concerted observations should be considered as
fundamental criteria for the concerted of the EIAs (Environmental Impact Assessment (quoted in
Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 208).
According to Juan Pablo Flores, my informant within CEADL, consultation processes
are time-consuming and expensive, and thus, it is not in the state’s interest to go through with
such procedures in the first place (La Paz, 16.10.13). This is also documented by SchillingVacaflor (2013). According to her, it usually takes several months to finalize an agreement
between the state, the corporation and the indigenous community in question, and moreover,
unless indigenous representatives possess adequate knowledge of the planned project about to
occur on their territory, the resulting agreement is – more often than not – biased in favor of
67 state representatives’ interests rather than towards the interests of those representing the
indigenous community (Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 208-209).
According to Juan Pablo Flores, a similar case recently occurred in the northern area
of La Paz: consultation processes were conducted, but they were anything but ‘free’, ‘prior’
and ‘informed’, as enshrined within international instruments as well as within the country’s
new constitution. Rather, he argued:
You know very well that in every indigenous community there are a lot of children, but there is no
way that these children can say either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to exploration of hydrocarbons on their soil. But
what happens? The kids sign off on sheets that state that the indigenous community participated in a
process of consultation! And then arrive state representatives once more and show these sheets to the
adults and say: “Look, here are the consultation-sheets with more than 50 signatures”. But, children
that are 10-12 years old – who do not have the capacity to take on such responsibility yet – have
signed these sheets. This creates some serious problems because, altogether, indigenous communities
stop believing in the state (Juan Pablo Flores, La Paz, 16.10.13).
Except from the obvious facts of corruption and biased interests of the state, this quote
also makes it perfectly clear that the Morales administration’s continuous dependency upon
natural resource extraction weakens its legitimacy vis-à-vis the indigenous population. As
Juan Pablo argues, indigenous communities no longer have faith in the state. Consequently, it
is reasonable to assume that in much the same ways as the state pursues its own interests, so
too do indigenous peoples. During my interview with Juan Pablo, the following statement
highlights this point:
[Since] the state does not comply, indigenous peoples go directly to transnational companies instead,
and say: “If you want to exploit here, that’s fine, but we want this and that”, and voilá – the
transnational companies give them [the indigenous peoples] what they [indigenous community and
transnational company] have agreed upon. The state does not intervene because, in the long run, it [the
state] knows that it will benefit from the returns from natural resource extraction. Thus, towards the
public, the state keeps its mouth shut. For instance, between 2000 and 2010 – so that Evo Morales
would win his electoral mandate in 2005 – PETROBRAS did this on a regular basis. There is a
Guaraní community that gained approximately 10 or 11 million US dollars, but these money were not
transferred directly of course: they [the money] went through some mechanisms within the
international market and then the indigenous community withdrew it bit by bit (Juan Pablo Flores, La
Paz 16.10.13).
68 In light of this statement, we can reason that the state’s inability – or as Juan Pablo
argues, its unwillingness – to sufficiently control the hydrocarbon sector has resulted in a
replay of the tendencies that characterized Bolivia during its corporatist era. In much the same
ways as indigenous peoples, through patron-clientelist relations, operated ‘beyond the reach
of the state’ (Yashar 1999) to gain access to certain social services in the 1950s, so it is
reasonable to assume they are still doing.
Several hypotheses might explain why Bolivia’s hydrocarbon sector is characterized
by large-scale corruption, and moreover, why the state struggles to comply with the legal
human rights agenda advocated since the mid-1980s onwards. First, and following the report
commissioned by Norad (7/2012: 31), an institutional tension exists between the three main
institutions currently in charge of Bolivia’s petroleum sector. In theory, the MHE is supposed
to set out extractive policies with YPFB executing them, and moreover, to conduct prior
consultations with affected communities, as stated above. However, according to Article 361
of the new constitution, YPFB is the only actor authorized to further develop hydrocarbon
activities (Norad Report 7/2012: 31-32). Moreover, there are no legal mechanisms in place to
control the activities of the YPFB and thus, a political vacuum makes Bolivia’s petroleum
sector highly vulnerable to corruption – by state personnel as well as by regular citizens.
Second, it is reasonable to argued that in the absent of Karl’s (2007) ‘fiscal social
contract’ – which might indeed be a characterizing feature of the Bolivian society –
corruption increases simply because citizens do not have incentives to trust that the state
promotes their interests instead of its own or those of transnational corporations’. In the
Bolivian case, the Morales administration has largely failed to change its macro policies
towards that of protection of Mother Earth and the environment, albeit its repeated promises
to conduct such a political shift (Hecht 2013: xi). Moreover, although the MHE is supposed to
be an impartial actor in any consultation process and the YPFB an unbiased one in regulating
the petroleum sector more generally, both have repeatedly been accused of partiality towards
particular transnational companies (Norad Report 7/2012: 32, Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: 215).
Thus, it is reasonable to assume that indigenous peoples have lost faith in the state altogether,
as stated by Juan Pablo in one of the above quotes.
Indeed, transnational corporations must take their share of the political and socioeconomic implications caused by corruption – such as increased cleavages between and
amongst indigenous communities due to uneven access to capital, and moreover, of the
continuous tensions this creates between indigenous peoples and the state. However, it is also
69 reasonable to assume that in the absence of compliance to international human rights
instruments, and moreover, the ways in which the MAS party has increasingly centralized its
power more recently, indigenous peoples feel the need to keep a certain distance from the
state and political parties in general, simply to maintain a definite degree of autonomy. Bull
(2013) has elaborated on this point at length. She argues that as clientelism has historically
been associated with only semi-political inclusion – either through the emerging of classes
(e.g. campesinos, peasants) or through a subordinate position vis-à-vis existing elites –
indigenous peoples in particular and social movements more generally find it better to ‘keep
their distance’ than to rely upon a state that – supposedly – is to grant them political,
economic and civic rights (Bull 2013: 79).
However, we might reason, as Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 28) does, that the effects of
the legal regulatory framework – be that large-scale corruption or the state’s inability to
sufficiently control its hydrocarbon sector and moreover, its failure to comply with prior
consultation procedures – results from both the limits and opportunities created by, on the one
hand, the legal justice system itself (e.g. the laws and rules) and by the subjective
understandings and legal strategies of the actors that use them, on the other.
During my fieldwork in Bolivia, one of my informants touched upon this aspect once I
met with him while participating in the workshop hosted by UNITAS in Cochabamba. A man
in his early 30s, Leandro Candapay Chauarría proudly introduced himself as belonging to the
Guaraní peoples of the Chaco region, which makes up no less than three of Bolivia’s
departments: Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca and Tarija, respectively. During my interview with
Leandro, his skepticism towards the Morales administration’s continuous dependency upon
natural resource extraction was made abundantly clear: in his opinion, the state pursues an
extractivist development model to finance social programs that his community has yet to see
the fruits of, and moreover, he argued that his backyard still serves as ‘the playground’ for
transnational corporations in their ever increasing search for natural gas, which is located in
the soil of the Guaraní community to which he belongs and lives (Interview, Cochabamba,
21.10.13). Discussing the outcomes of the Morales administration’s extractivist development
model, and moreover, of the FPIC, Leandro stated the following:
Often, the only political space we have is within our respective organizations – that’s where we
discuss our needs and problems – and over the past decades, also issues that go beyond those of mere
justice. As such, the Morales administration’s legal justice system is somewhat subordinated to that of
the indigenous justice system. However, whenever we decide to deal with problems [internal or
70 external outcomes stemming from natural resource extraction] within our community, then –
immediately – the state intervenes with its legal justice system. But, it is not us who do not respect
human rights – it is they! [The state]. Therefore, we have a huge job ahead of us: we have the capacity
[to participate in societal transformation] but we are neither given the opportunity nor the power to do
so and thus, the only possibility for us is to continue to fight. If we manage to win political positions –
that will be due to our respective organizations and not due to ourselves [not due to peoples’
individual performances] (Leandro Candapay Chauarría, Cochabamba, 21.10.13).
In Leandro’s opinion, the only political space currently available to indigenous
peoples is within their respective organizations, but their autonomous character is currently
being threatened by the ways in which the Morales administration’s promotes a legal human
rights system whose framework is characterized by laws and procedures that – to a greater or
lesser extent – undermine the political structure commonly associated with indigenous
communities.
Following Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 29), the legal human rights paradigm underway
since the 1980s onwards, and particularly the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC)
– which has been both advocated and praised by the international indigenous rights movement
itself – rests upon a procedural rationality and moreover, upon unequal power relations that
yields various sets of consequences in practice. With reference to the quotes presented thus
far, the following paragraphs explore some of these effects in greater detail.
What Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 30) terms the “displacement effect” is perhaps most
visible with reference to my interview with Juan Pablo, referred to above. Due to the
procedural character and numerous steps commonly associated with prior consultations –
such as deadlines, timelines, expenses and locations – the more substantive conflicts (e.g. the
actual conflict over territorial control, environmental damages and preservation of indigenous
cultures) are simply displaced, replaced or postponed, particularly if the parties involved in
the consultation procedure hold profoundly opposing views. Under such circumstances, the
laws procedural character creates a politicized vacuum of ‘neutrality’ between the opposing
parties that only serves to postpone the issues that initially sparked the conflict in the first
place (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010: 32). In practice, the displacement effect is evident with
reference to monetary compensations so commonly associated with natural resource
extraction on indigenous territories (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010: 31). As highlighted in my
interview with Juan Pablo: in the absence of the Bolivian state’s presence in consultation
procedures, indigenous peoples negotiate directly with transnational companies – a case in
71 point that replaces the actual conflict over natural resource extraction with that of monetary
compensation and moreover, leaves the state with even fewer incentives to efficiently
incorporate its indigenous population into national policies of natural resource governance.
Moreover, what Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 36-40) terms the “domination effect” is
also a common characteristic featuring the regulatory framework onto which prior
consultations is build. Rather than the neoliberal premise of equality between the numerous
stakeholders involved, we might reason that the legal battlefield in which prior consultations
are fought is anything but symmetric in practice. This helps explain why nearly all of my
informants simply argue that the state fails to comply to human right laws in general – and
particularly those of the FPIC. As highlighted by both Juan Pablo and Leandro, more often
than not, do indigenous peoples lack the capabilities – be that power, knowledge or money –
to benefit from prior consultations and thus, the procedures themselves do not allow for free
and informed participation, let alone genuine consent. As Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 36)
argues: “…the reality of consultation usually resembles a private act of negotiation more than
a public act of deliberation…” Thus, it might be argued that – given the inequality between
the parties involved – structural power relations are left intact. As such, we might reason that
the FPIC has failed to close the gap between the indigenous peoples and other stakeholders
involved in natural resource extraction – the very goal that the right initially sought to secure.
3.2 El anteproyecto de la ley de consulta previa
It is commonly argued that, in a favorable political climate, prior consultations and FPIC
function as a political instrument to strengthen indigenous peoples’ political participation visà-vis the state, and moreover, that such rights ensure greater incorporation of indigenous
peoples’ local conceptions of development and environmental concerns. To date however, we
can reason that extractivism triumph indigenous peoples’ local knowledge to the extent that
socio-environmental conflicts persist nationally as well as regionally. Thus, the various
stakeholders’ unequal access to the capabilities needed to exercise the FPIC in practice, leaves
structural power relations largely untouched.
Due to these unintended outcomes, more recently, a political struggle has reemerged
over the right to prior consultations, in which two opposing groups have been established on
Bolivia’s national political arena (Field notes 31.10.13). Known as el anteproyecto de la ley
de consulta previa (the ‘anti-project’ of the law/right to prior consultation), representatives
within BARTOLINA SISA (the National Confederation of Peasants, Indigenous and Native
72 Women in Bolivia) and CSUTCB (the Unified Syndical Confederation of Rural Workers of
Bolivia) – amongst others – is found to support the MAS party’s position, whereas
CONAMAQ and CIDOB (the Indigenous Federation of Eastern Bolivia, the Santa Cruz-based
national federation of indigenous peoples) are found on the other (Field notes, 31.10.13). Note
that, as highlighted elsewhere in this thesis, because of looser ties to the Morales
administration, CONAMAQ and CIDOB have formed their own alliance against the MAS
party and other highland indigenous federations. In this particular case at least, this
strengthens the assumption previously highlighted, namely that the Morales administration
tends to favor those indigenous federations that – at least publicly – do not oppose the state
administration’s continuous reliance upon extractivism to the same extent as lowland
indigenous federations and CONAMAQ (albeit commonly defined as a highland
organization) are known to do.
This recent fraction is rooted in what CONAMAQ and CIDOB perceive of as
inconsistencies within the current law of the FPIC (Group interview, La Paz, 31.10.13). While
in La Paz, Walter Limache – the coordinator of Programa NINA (UNITAS) – and one of his
staff members, Edwin – whom is originally from the Department of Cochabamba – gave me a
brief insight into this much recent phenomenon. According to them, since the TIPNIS case in
2011, indigenous peoples from numerous indigenous organizations and communities have
been mobilizing to get the right to prior consultation revised within the Constitutional
Assembly. Unhappy with the outcome of the TIPNIS case in which the Morales
administration made no efforts of carrying out prior consultation exercise (McNeish 2013:
226), indigenous federations – with significant support from CONAMAQ and CIDOB in
particular – managed to have the right revised several times, and in April 2013, a new
proposal of the FPIC was put forth in the Constituent Assembly. Following Walter and
Edwin, this is what has become known as el anteprojecto de la ley de consulta previa (the
anti-project of the law/right to prior consultation) (Group interview, La Paz 31.10.13).
However, the bill has been severely criticized from several quarters: first off, the
government’s new proposal has made a separation between rights to prior consultations
towards indígenas y originarios (indigenous and native groups) on the one hand, and rights to
prior consultations towards campesinos (peasants) on the other. Whilst BARTOLINA SISA
and CSUTCB are clearly in favor of this diversification as it grants indigenous-campesinos
(peasants) certain collective rights due to their belonging to the campesino-classification,
CONAMAQ and CIDOB on the other hand, claim it exceeds the new constitution, which
states that indigenous peoples ought be defined as indígena originario campesino (indígena
73 originario peasant). According to the latter fraction, the new constitution operates without a
separation between ethnic groups and thus, if the new proposal articulated by the Morales
administration (and those who support it) is passed in the Constituent Assembly – then, old
political cleavages are kept alive rather than significantly reduced. Moreover, due to the
government’s proposal of placing prior consultations into the public sphere and also, to limit
consultation procedures to a two-months period rather than ‘as long as necessary’ to establish
sound agreements between the parties involved, CONAMAQ and CIDOB argue that
indigenous peoples’ decision-making role in extractive processes are in danger of being
further weakened. Consequently, their role to significantly affect the outcomes of the
procedures will be close to zero (Group interview, La Paz, 31.10.13).
To date, no decisions have been reached concerning the ‘anti-project’ described above
– neither between and amongst the opposing indigenous federations, nor with reference to the
MAS party’s hostile position towards certain indigenous federations – lowland organizations
in particular (Interview 31.10.13). Thus, it is reasonable to assume, as Schilling-Vacaflor
(2013: 217) does, that attempts of building a plurinational state is limited by Bolivia’s current
politico-economic context, in which the FPIC are currently exercised. Moreover, the
“displacement effect” touched upon in the previous section of this chapter is evident also here
– a case in point that largely confirms that the FPIC has become an institution of its own
within what Rodríguez-Garavito (2010: 26) terms the “transnational regulation of indigenous
rights”.
A similar conclusion is drawn by Flemmer & Schilling-Vacaflor (2013) in their GIGA
draft paper11. Albeit acknowledging the obvious limitations of the FPIC – which might indeed
be termed a project still ‘in its making’ – they nonetheless suggest that, in the long run, the
tensions caused by prior consultations might nonetheless contribute to what they term
“conflict transformation”. In their opinion, effective participation will follow suit if
stakeholders are given equal rights to define and shape the participatory space in which prior
consultations are exercised (Flemmer & Schilling-Vacaflor (2013: 20).
This certainly yields hope for the future. However, it is still too soon to tell whether
these rights serve as mechanisms that in reality strengthen indigenous peoples’ decisionmaking role and position in natural resource governance and policies, or if they simply leave
unequal power relations intact, as has been the case with reforms and policies implemented by
11 Flemmer & Schilling-Vacaflor 2013: ”Exploring the Consultation-Conflict Link: Lessons from
Bolivia’s and Peru’s Gas and Oil Sector” – GIGA draft that has yet to be officially published
74 previous regimes. Therefore, further research is needed before any absolute conclusions can
be drawn – particularly regarding the effects of the legal regulatory framework currently in
place. To date, its wrapped within an international discourse of “multicultural
constitutionalism” (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010), which, in my opinion, resembles anything but
the demands of territorial control, self-determination and autonomy that indigenous peoples
have been fighting for since the Spanish conquistadores first put their feet on Bolivian soil in
the early 1500s (Postero 2007: 3). This certainly helps explain why Bolivia is still in a stage
of unresolved tensions – as exemplified throughout this entire thesis. Thus, I conclude here
that prior consultations strengthen indigenous peoples’ political participation only if – and
when – the outcomes of natural resource extraction on indigenous peoples territories are
properly addressed. Since the various stakeholders involved in natural resource extraction
oftentimes are in disagreement over what the outcomes ought to be, I reason that socioenvironmental conflicts will be a persistent feature in Bolivia also in the years to come.
75 3.0 Concluding remarks
The aim of this thesis has been to explore the main challenges associated with the inclusion of
indigenous peoples in processes of natural resource extraction in Bolivia. I argue that, despite
formal advances in cultural recognition and political representation, indigenous peoples’
political space to effectively participate in natural resource governance is at best, still severely
limited. This is related to a variety of factors that are addressed in what follows.
Firstly, a main challenge of natural resource extraction results from the ‘middleground’ position currently advocated by the Morales administration. Whilst the state depends
upon the revenues from natural resource extraction to finance ambitious public services and
programs, the continued reliance upon and expansion of extractive industries is nonetheless a
main source of tension between the state and the indigenous population in its own right This
tension is rooted in different understandings of the meaning of indigeneity on the one hand,
and in contestations over what the extractive development model can if fact accomplish, on
the other.
To some analysts, the “Andean-Amazonian” capitalist model is simply incompatible
with the visions and aspirations for development held by themselves and/or their community
and thus, ought to be left behind altogether. Within this ‘idealized Amazonian cosmovision’
(Fabricant 2013: 164), capitalism destroys gender complementarity and undermines
egalitarianism.
However, what is largely neglected in this view is that indigeneity is not a static and
heterogeneous concept, and neither are the peoples that define themselves according to it.
Rather, neoliberalism ‘act to define citizen participation’ according to certain logics (Postero
2007: 15) and it is thus an illusion to assume that indigenous peoples and their communities
are somehow untouched by societal changes. This is backed up by the, often, conflicting
statements made to me by indigenous informants during my field research.
I therefore reject the polarized approaches commonly found within the “indigenous
peoples debate” (Canessa 2007), which define indigenous peoples according to stereotyped
images such as ‘the noble savage’ or the ‘eco-Indian’. As this thesis reveals, indigenous
peoples have been negotiating the meanings of indigeneity throughout Bolivia’s political
history. To date, there continues to be disagreement between and amongst indigenous peoples
and the state as to what the concept ought to imply, and more importantly: what it does not
imply. Thus, tensions are apparent.
76 The second factor that hampers effective inclusion of indigenous peoples in processes
of natural resource governance is related to the consequences produced by the “AndeanAmazonian” model currently in place. Hindery (2013: 150) argues that: “ […] under AndeanAmazonian capitalism the state prescribed a universal template for modernization, with little
chance to opt out”. This is compatible with my field research findings. Whilst the state has
regained control over its hydrocarbon sector – particularly through the nationalization of the
production chain – the sector is found to be institutionally weak, with internal conflicts
between and amongst the departments that currently manage the sector. This yields largescale corruption – amongst state officials in particular – but also amongst and between
indigenous peoples that are involved in processes of natural resource extraction on indigenous
territories. Corruption is further strengthened due to limited public information and regulation
of the hydrocarbon sector at large. Moreover, to date, no law exists that regulates access to
public information (Norad Report 7/2012: 32). Taken together, large-scale corruption, weak
institutional capacity and lack of transparency hampers any effects of building a hydrocarbon
sector in which indigenous peoples can effectively participate in processes of natural resource
extraction. To date then, there seems to be slim chances for ‘opting out’.
Also, in the absent of a ‘fiscal social contract’ (Karl 2007) – which, at the time of
writing is more or less non-existing in Bolivia – the state has no cause to direct its policies
away from natural resource extraction and the interests of transnational corporations. In my
opinion, this yields consequences beyond that of increased corruption: in line with the state’s
declining legitimacy vis-à-vis its citizenry, the greater becomes the citizenry’s need to keep a
certain distance – as witnessed by indigenous federations’ claim for autonomy. This
complicates attempts to include indigenous peoples into state policies in general, and to
strengthen their decision-making role in processes of natural resource extraction in particular.
Thus, whilst Karl’s ‘fiscal social contract’ is useful in terms of explaining Bolivia’s ‘rentseeking’ behavior – which indeed explains a great deal of the complex corruption-legitimacy
issue in Bolivia – her theory nonetheless fails to acknowledge that the country’s history has
also left its mark on issues that are societal in character, rather than solely economic. As this
thesis reveals, the absent of a profound social contract that intrinsically links indigenous
peoples to the state as a whole (rather than solely towards those with economic power, e.g. the
elite) has been lacking throughout Bolivia’s entire political history – arguably, until present.
This helps explain why indigenous peoples generally find it better to keep a safe distance
from the state, than to follow ‘the lead’ of whoever holds office.
77 However, the negative outcomes of the “Andean-Amazonian” capitalist model are also
strengthened through the global political economy to which the Bolivian society is immersed.
The global political economy is ordered such as to depend upon natural resource extraction to
encourage economic consumerism commonly associated with ‘modernity’ and thus,
development. However, booms in natural resource extraction are frequently followed by
socio-environmental conflicts or even civil war because extractivism tends to undermine the
resource sovereignty of those affected by its outcomes. In this regard, the ‘recourse-curse’
literature thus seems to be applicable.
Nevertheless, I question the ‘resource-curse’ literature’s relevance to Bolivia on one
point in particular: whilst socio-environmental conflicts persist due to the extraction of nonrenewable resources, the unresolved tensions between and amongst indigenous peoples and
the state are rooted in perspectives that are ideological in character rather than solely
economic in nature, as some advocates of the ‘resource-curse’ literature suggest. Whilst it is
found that the Morales administration expands its extractive industries primarily due to
economic necessity, my findings suggest that indigenous peoples mostly resist the “AndeanAmazonian” capitalist model because it leaves power relations and ideological discourses
untouched. Moreover, they resist it because – as history reveals – economic growth based on
natural resource extraction alone has neither increased their political and economic power nor
granted them a greater decision-making role in natural resource extraction.
A failure to recognize both the political economic structural characteristics and sociohistorical contexts of resource-rich countries plays a significant role in conflicts following
from natural resource extraction. Indeed, countries in the global south might find themselves
in the very same peripheral position a couple of decades down the road as they, arguably, find
themselves in today. In Bolivia, the unresolved tensions and the negative outcomes that
follow from them are derived from models and reforms implemented by previous regimes and
thus, cannot be explained by exploring the linkages between economic performance and
natural resource wealth alone. Rather, as my fieldwork findings and interviews reveal: racism,
political and economic institutions and cultural logics have reinforced the enduring structures
of inequality that were created by colonialism. These patterns of exclusionism explain why
indigenous peoples are still excluded from effectively participating in processes of natural
resource extraction even under the mainstream discourses of ‘pachamamismo’ and ‘ethnic
rights’.
The third and final challenge addressed in this thesis is the question of prior
consultations or free, prior and informed consent. Although the international indigenous rights
78 movement has advocated the ‘ethnic rights agenda’ these mechanism have largely not been
implemented correctly to ensure indigenous peoples’ participatory power in processes
associated with natural resource extraction in Bolivia. This is due to the poor regulatory
framework in which prior consultations are immersed, which is characterized by the centrality
of the law and which give priority to procedural activities rather than to the actual outcomes
following from natural resource extraction.
As the last chapter in my thesis reveals, prior consultations thus come with a set of
negative consequences. Here, I placed an emphasis on the “displacement effect” and the
“domination effect” in particular, as both became evident in conversations with my
informants. Due to the procedural character of prior consultations, in practice, the more
substantive conflicts (e.g. the actual conflict over territorial control and environmental
damages) are frequently displaced, replaced or postponed. Moreover, and contrary to the
neoliberal assumption of equality between parties – in practice, processes of prior
consultations are commonly exercised within a political climate in which the stakeholders
involved hold anything but equal political and economic power (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010:
36). Indigenous peoples commonly do not hold either the economic or the political
capabilities needed to sufficiently affect the outcomes of prior consultations. Consequently,
they are bound to an inferior and subordinated position within the legal regulatory framework
that was initially advocated to enforce their decision-making role in processes of natural
resource extraction in the first place.
Thus, whilst the rights to prior consultations were initially promoted to strengthen
indigenous peoples participation power and decision-making role in processes of natural
resource extraction, the rights leave structural power relations untouched. Albeit that prior
consultations yields hope for the future as far as political participation goes, they have, thus
far, failed to close the gap between the indigenous peoples and other stakeholders involved in
processes of natural resource extraction. If prior consultations are to serve as human rights
instruments that efficiently include indigenous peoples into state policies of natural resource
extraction, the structural power relations currently intact must be properly addressed and dealt
with. To date, prior consultations yield abysmal disparities in power and resources between
the parties involved, thus causing unresolved tensions within the borders of Bolivia. Thus,
further research ought to refocus their attention towards these enduring structures of
inequality in which indigenous peoples are immersed rather than to rely upon that prior
consultations alone will serve to strengthen indigenous peoples’ participatory role in
processes of natural resource extraction.
79 This thesis has explored the main challenges associated with the inclusion of
indigenous peoples in processes of natural resource extraction. My field research and
interviews suggest that the Morales administration struggles to overcome enduring structures
of inequality – even under the current indigenous discourse in which ‘ethnic rights’ has
become “mainstream”. Unresolved tensions thus persist in Bolivia anno 2014. Above all, this
reminds us that indigeneity continues to be a productive category though which history is
made and remade (Postero 2013: 118). Whilst created by colonialism and reproduced by
political and economic institutions and cultural logics, indigeneity is certainly not an issue of
the past. As this thesis reveals, contestations over what it means to be indigenous and over
how to effectively include the indigenous population in processes of natural resource
extraction is likely to create tensions amongst and between indigenous peoples and the
Bolivian state also in the years to come.
80 4.0 Bibliography
Albó, X. (2008) “The “Long Memory” of Ethnicity in Bolivia and Some Temporary
Oscillations”. In Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present, Crabtree, J. and Whitehead,
L. (eds), pp. 13-34. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Andersson, V., and Haarstad, H. (2009) ‘Citizenship and State-Building in Contemporary
Bolivia; Politization of Cultural Identity’, Global Development Studies (GDS), GDS Research
Series, Working Paper no. 2, pp. 1-30.
Arbona, J. A., and Kohl B. (2004). ‘City Profile: La Paz – El Alto’, Cities, vol. 21, no. 3, pp.
255-265.
Auty, R. M & Gelb, A. H. (2000) ‘Political Economy of Resource Abundant States’, Paper
prepared for the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, pp. 1-13.
Bebbington, A., Hinojosa, L., Bebbington D. H., Burneo M. S., & Warnaars, X. (2008)
‘Contention and Ambiguity: Mining and the Possibilities for Development’, Development and
Change, vol. 39, no. 6, pp. 965-992.
Bebbington, A. (2009) ‘The New Extraction: Revising the Political Ecology of the Andes?’,
NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. 42, no. 5, pp. 12-40.
Bebbington, A., and Bebbington D. H. (2011) ‘An Andean Avatar: Post-neoliberal and
Neoliberal Strategies for Securing the Unobtainable’, New Political Economy, vol. 16, no. 1,
pp. 131-145.
Berg, B. L. & Lune H. (2012) Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences (8th ed.).
US: Pearson Education, Inc.
Binns, T. (2006) “Doing Fieldwork in Developing Countries: Planning and Logistics”. In
Doing Development Research, Desai, V. and Potter, R. B. (eds), pp. 13-24. London: Sage
Publications Ltd.
81 Brydon, L. (2006) “Ethical Practices in Doing Development Research”. In Doing
Development Research, Desai, V. and Potter, R. B. (eds), pp. 25-33. London: Sage
Publications Ltd.
Bull, B. (2007) ‘Comparing Critical Junctures: The Democratic Inclusion of Social
Movements in Norway and Latin America’, Forum for Development Studies, vol. 34, no. 1,
pp. 63-89.
Bull, B. (2013) “Social Movements and the ‘Pink Tide’ Governments in Latin America:
Transformation, Inclusion and Rejection”. In Democratization in the Global South, Stokke, K.
and Törnquist, O. (eds), pp. 75-99.
Canessa, A. (2007) ‘Who is Indigenous? Self-Identification, Indigeneity, And Claims to
Justice In Contemporary Bolivia’, Urban Anthropology, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 195-237.
Caritas.org.: Bolivia, Pastoral Social – Caritas Bolivia (where we are/latin-america/bolivia)
[online]
Available
at:
<http://www.caritas.org/where-we-are/latin-america/bolivia/>
[31.05.14]
Crabtree, J. (2008) “Introduction: A Story of Unresolved Tensions”, in Unresolved Tensions:
Bolivia Past and Present, John Crabtree, J. and Whitehead, L. (eds), pp. 1-7. Pittsburgh, PA:
University of Pittsburgh Press.
de la Cadena, M. (2010) ‘Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections
beyond “Politics”’, Cultural Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 334-370.
Fabricant, N. (2013) “Good Living for Whom? Bolivia’s Climate Justice Movement and the
Limitations of Indigenous Cosmovisions”. In Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies,
vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 202-220. San Diego, CA: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.
Flemmer, R. and Schilling-Vacaflor, A. (2013) “Exploring the Consultation-Conflict Link.
Lessons from Bolivia’s and Peru’s Gas and Oil Sector”, [draft] GIGA German Institute of
Global and Area Studies, pp. 1-23.
82 Flesken, A. (2013) ‘Ethnicity without Group: Dynamics of Indigeneity in Bolivia’,
Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 333-353.
Gotkowitz, L. (2007) A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice
in Bolivia, 1880-1952. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Haarstad, H. and Campero, C. (2012) “Extraction, Regional Integration, and the Enduring
Problem of Local Political Spaces”. In New Political Spaces in Latin American Natural
Resource Governance, Haarstad, H. (eds). pp. 84-105. New York: Palgrave McMillan.
Hecht, S. B. (2013) “Foreword”. In From Enron to Evo: Pipeline Politics, Global
Environmentalism, and Indigenous Rights in Bolivia, Hindery, D. Tucson: The University of
Arizona Press.
Henstridge, M., Cabello, M., Haglund, D., Lipshcutz, K., Jacobsen, M. and Williams R. (eds)
Norad Report (7/2012 Discussion) “Enhancing the integrity of the Oil for Development
Programme: Assessing vulnerabilities to corruption and identifying prevention measures –
case studies of Bolivia, Mozambique and Uganda”. Oslo, NO: the Norwegian Agency of
Development and Cooperation.
Hindery, D. (2013) From Enron to Evo: Pipeline Politics, Global Environmentalism, and
Indigenous Rights in Bolivia. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.
Karl, T. L. (2007) “Ensuring Fairness: The Case for a Transparent Fiscal Social Contract”. In
Escaping the Resource Curse, Humphreys, M., Sachs, J. D. and Stiglitz, J. E. (eds), pp. 256285. New York: Colombian University Press.
Kaup, B. Z. (2010) ‘A Neoliberal Nationalization? The Constraints on Natural-Gas-Led
Development in Bolivia’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 123-138.
Kohl, B. (2010) ‘Bolivia under Morales: A work in Progress’, Latin American Perspectives,
vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 107-122.
83 Logan, O. and McNeish, J-A. (2012) “Rethinking Responsibility and Governance in Resource
Extraction”. In Flammable Societies: Studies on the Socio-economics of Oil and Gas,
McNeish, J-A. and Logan, O. (eds), pp. 3-44. London: Pluto Press.
Mercer, C. (2006) “Working with Partners: NGOs and CBOs”. In Doing Development
Research, Desai, V. and Potter, R. B. (eds), pp. 94-103. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
McNeish, J-A., Eversole, R. (2005) “Introduction: indigenous peoples and poverty”. In
Indigenous Peoples and Poverty: An International Perspective, Eversole, R., McNeish, J-A.
and Cimadamore, A. D. (eds), pp. 1-26. London & New York: Zed Books.
McNeish, J-A. (2011) ‘Rethinking Resource Conflict’, World Development Report, pp. 1-28.
McNeish, J-A. (2013) ‘Extraction, Protest and Indigeneity in Bolivia: The TIPNIS Effect’,
Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 221-242.
Medeiros, C. (2001) ‘Civilizing the Popular? The Law of Popular Participation and the
Design of a New Civil Society in 1990s Bolivia’, Critiques of Anthropology, vol. 21, no. 4,
pp. 401-425.
Mignolo, W. D. (2005) “”Latin” America and the First Reordering of the Modern/Colonial
World”. In The Idea of Latin America, Mignolo, W. D., pp. 51-94. Oxford, UK: Blackwell
Publishing.
Mikkelsen, B. (2005) Methods for Development Work and Research: A New Guide for
Practitioners (2nd ed.). New Delhi, Thousand Oaks & London: Sage Publications.
Misjonsalliansen:
Her
jobber
vi
–
Bolivia
[online]
Available
at:
<http://www.misjonsalliansen.no/her-jobber-vi/bolivia> [19.05.14]
Molina, G. G. (2008) “State-Society Relations in Bolivia: The Strength of Weakness”. In
Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present, Crabtree, J. and Whitehead, L. (eds), pp. 109124. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
84 Peet, R., and Hartwick, E. (2009) Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments,
Alternatives. New York: The Guilford Press.
Postero, N. (2005) ‘Indigenous Responses to Neoliberalism: A Look at the Bolivian Uprising
of 2003’, Political and Legal Anthropology Review, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 73-92.
Postero, N. (2007) Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous Politics in Postmulticultural Bolivia.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Postero, N. (2013) “Introduction: Negotiating Indigeneity”. In Latin American and Caribbean
Ethnic Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 202-220. San Diego, CA: Routledge, Taylor and Francis
Group.
Programa NINA – UNITAS (2012) Compendio: Constitución Política del Estado
Plurinacional de Bolivia, pp. 13-159. La Paz, BO: Previa Gráfica.
Rodríguez-Garavito, C. (2010) ‘Ethnicity.gov: Global Governance, Indigenous Peoples and
the Right to Prior Consultations in Social Minefields’, Indiana Journal of Global Legal
Studies, vol.18, no.1, pp. 1-44.
Rosser, A. (2006) ‘The Political Economy of the Resource Curse’, Institute of Development
Studies, Working Paper no. 268, pp. 1-34.
Ross, M. L. (1999) ‘The Political Economy of the Resource Curse’, World Politics, vol. 51,
no. 2, pp. 297-322.
Schilling-Vacaflor, A. (2011) ‘Bolivia’s New Constitution: Towards Participatory Democracy
and Political Pluralism?’ Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation, pp. 3-22.
Schilling-Vacaflor, A. (2013) “Prior Consultations in Plurinational Bolivia: Democracy,
Rights and Real Life Experiences”. In Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, vol. 8,
no. 2, pp. 202-220. San Diego, CA: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.
85 Somos Sur: Un espacio alternativo de (in)formación (about us/who we are) [online] Available
at: <http://somossur.net/acerca-de-nosotros/quienes-somos.html> [25.05.14]
Telles, E., and Bailey, S. (2013) ‘Understanding Latin America’s Beliefs about Racial
Inequality’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 118, no. 6, pp. 1559-1595.
The United Nations: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:
[online] Available at: <http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf > [29.05.14]
The United Nations: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: [online] Available at:
<http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a1> [29.05.14]
Transparency International: Corruption Perception Index 2013 [online] Available at:
<http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2013/results/> [04.06.14]
Wanderley, F., Mokrani, L., and Guimaráes, A. (2012) “The Socio-economic Dynamics of
Gas in Bolivia”, in Flammable Societies: Studies on the Socio-economics of Oil and Gas,
McNeish, J-A. and Logan, O. (eds), pp. 176-200. London: Pluto Press.
Willis, K. (2006) “Interviewing”. In Doing Development Research, Desai, V. and Potter, R.
B. (eds), pp. 144-152. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
World
Bank:
Data,
country
–
Bolivia
[online]
Available
at:
<http://data.worldbank.org/country/bolivia?display=graph> [24.05.14]
Yashar, D. J. (1999) ‘Democracy, Indigenous Movements, and the Postliberal Challenge in
Latin America’, World Politics, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 76-104.
86 5.0 Appendices
Appendix I: Interview guide
Questions asked to peoples working within NGO(s)/social movement(s)
I: Personal information:
1) Name
2) Age
3) Title(s)
4) Belonging to indigenous community
II: Regarding the Morales administration’s reliance upon natural resource extraction:
5) What are your thoughts regarding the Morales administration’s dependency upon
natural resource extraction? Elaborate.
6) What are your main concerns regarding a continued reliance upon natural resource
extraction?
7) In your opinion, are indigenous peoples included in processes of natural resource
governance under the “Andean-Amazonian” model pursued by the Morales
administration? (E.g. are indigenous peoples’ rights respected under this model) If yes,
how and why? If no, how and why?
8) In your opinion, to what extent do indigenous peoples benefit under the current
capitalist model?
9) Do you agree with the Morales administration that a continued reliance upon natural
resource extraction benefits the country as whole?
III: Regarding the nationalization processes of the hydrocarbon sector:
10) Can you please describe the nationalization processes of the hydrocarbon sector?
11) In your opinion, what are the main challenges associated with the nationalization of
the hydrocarbon sector?
IV: Regarding indigenous peoples rights and the right to prior consultations:
12) Can you please describe the evolvement of indigenous peoples rights into national
politics?
13) Can you explain the main difference between indigeno originario campesino as
enshrined within the new constitution?
14) Do you agree to this separation of ethnic groups? If yes, why? If no, why?
87 15) Compared to Bolivia’s previous regimes, are indigenous peoples rights respected
under the Morales administration? If yes, how? If no, how are they not?
16) Did you participate in the TIPNIS march?
17) In your opinion, are you content with the outcomes of the TIPNIS march?
18) Can you please explain the right to prior consultation and free, prior and informed
consent?
19) Have you ever participated in a process of prior consultation?
20) If yes, can you explain how it was done in practice and what the outcomes were?
21) In your opinion, does the right to prior consultation strengthen indigenous peoples
participatory power in processes of natural resource extraction?
22) Are you content with indigenous peoples’ present human right situation? If yes, why?
If not, what is missing?
V: Regarding the upcoming elections in December 2014:
23) Would you like for Evo Morales to hold the presidency for another five years? If yes,
why? If not, why?
24) In the upcoming elections, is it likely that other candidates pick up a fight against Evo
Morales?
88 Postboks 5003
NO-1432 Ås, Norway
+47 67 23 00 00
www.nmbu.no